"When you combine the audience-building power of captioning and the interactive aspects of links, it's easy to see how an investment in these additional services will set your programs apart from others. In closing, please keep in mind that our main goal is to make you feel comfortable and confident in our captioning services. When comparing VITAC's rates, services and quality to other vendors, please be sure that you're comparing apples to apples. We are confident that nobody in the industry can match the quality and experience of VITAC's work. You invest thousands of dollars into the highest production values for your shows so why settle for anything but the best in captioning to compliment your programs? "

"Minnesota Campaign Ad Captioning Law (2008) Senator Ann Rest's Video Explains the Law In the Minnesota tradition of commitment to access, the 2008 Legislature passed a law requiring all candidates for office who file with the Campaign Finance Board to caption their online and television ads and post transcripts of their radio ads. Minnesota citizens who are deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing and who want to get information about candidates through campaign ads will now be able to do so. In the following captioned video, Minnesota Senator Ann Rest demonstrates the power of captioning in creating accessibility. A transcript of the audio content with video descriptions is also available. This video was produced by Senate Media Services and is used with permission."

"L'accessibilità, lo abbiamo detto tante volte in questi mesi, è questione di volontà, di passione, di vocazione ma soprattutto di diritti e di doveri. Diritti delle persone con cecità e sordità di partecipare attivamente all'offerta culturale del proprio Paese, dovere della politica, degli amministratori e degli operatori culturali di formarsi, reperire informazioni, cercare specialisti e tecnici dell'accessibilità. Anche se non è facile, a volte le professionalità giuste si trovano tra persone che nella vita di tutti i giorni si occupano di cose apparentemente diverse, ma che coltivano con passione, devozione, ottimismo, inventiva, fantasia e competenza tutte quelle attività che si rivelano fondamentali per l'accessibilità - teatrale nel nostro caso. Oggi è il turno di Gianluca Aloi, una delle menti 'tecniche' più importanti dello spettacolo 'Le Avventure del Piccolo Burattino'. Lo abbiamo intervistato per voi, e anche un po' per noi."

Thread started Nov 10, 2011. In the private CCAC google group, hence only viewable to members who are signed in.

About http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/theater-talkback-the-writings-on-the-wall/

November 10, 2011, 12:00 pm Theater Talkback: The Writing's on the Wall By BEN BRANTLEY. " ... my greatest exposure to supertitles comes from seeing plays that were performed entirely in languages other than English. One of the privileges of having my job and being in New York City is that so many productions from all over the world visit here. (...) without supertitles I would have missed what was being said altogether in productions that were performed in Russian, Belarussian, German, Japanese, Greek, Arabic and Zulu, among others. Though they serve the same function, supertitles in the theater are different in their effect from subtitles in film. A movie (or television or computer) screen is a self-contained space, and the subtitles generally appear within that frame. Even if I haven't seen a foreign film in a while, I find that when I do, it's only a matter of minutes before I make the adjustment that allows me to feel I'm "listening" directly as I read. Supertitles for plays are usually projected on separate screens, above or to the side of the stage. And if the stage is large, your eyes are forced to leave the live action to read the words. (...) You are forced, in these cases, to make a choice between word and image, which isn't really fair to a work of theater that is ideally a melding of both. (I don't have that problem with opera, partly because a single sentence - like "I love you" - may be stretched out and repeated to cover acres of music.) And of course when certain infelicities of translation occur, you can be jerked abruptly from the internal reality of the play. ..."

Mentioned by Lauren Storck in a Google group discussion.

"Open captioning is visible to all and cannot be turned off. Closed is when you or someone else must find the control and turns it on, be it for videos online, movies/cinema, theater, other media.. Problems with closed captions (compared to open captioning For all) include the following: a. It's often very difficult to find how to turn on the cc - systems vary so much online. b. Millions do not know it's there at all. c. We have a huge issue of communication access for all across the country (and globally). We suggest continuing education and advocacy for inclusion of much more captioning universally (e.g. on all videos online). d. An argument for closed captioning reminds us of the folks who complain loudly (we are told) in the cinema when captioning is showing - we say, get used to it. Focus on the communication that works for you - speech, text, whatever. e. Use the language you need and prefer; it's nice to have a choice, so many do not have any choice - they have no cc at all for much online. --"

Re a and b: on YouTube, closed captioning autostarts with the video. In platforms for making closed captions and subtitles - DotSUB, UniversalSubtitles, Overstream - the player very clearly announces the closed captions / subtitles in other languages. Re e.: isn't there even less open captioning online. And from a volunteer captioner's view point, it's way easier to produce closed captioning than open captioning (Claude)

Message in the private http://groups.google.com/group/ccaxslc?hl=en group: you have to be subscribed and logged in to view it.

Message in the private http://groups.google.com/group/ccaxslc?hl=en group: you have to be subscribed and logged in to view it.

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about http://closedcapp.com/

Hi Lauren and All

Diigo is primarily a social BOOKMARKING app, i.e. for sharing links (bookmarks) of useful/interesting/etc sites with others, and for being able to access them yourself if you are using another computer or device. Bookmarks for CCAC CAPs can be added too, but let's decide on a tag for them (maybe simply CAP) so that all - and only - CAP-related bookmarks can be retrieved in one click on that tag.

Diigo group TOPICS are a secondary feature. It does work like a forum for each group, and it can be one of the tools for publicizing given CAPs, once they are presented online and Diigo-bookmarked, among would-be followers of our Diigo group and for answering their questions. This is very targeted and potentially very useful, also to encourage people to join the general project.

However, Diigo group topics cannot replace the blog in publicizing CAPs, because the blog will reach a wider public. And they are not a very efficient tool for collaboratively prepare a CAP: in the case of "CCAC CAP 3: Repository of Captioning and CART Resources/Technologies", Zehavit and I have decided to have a Skype conversation (possibly + written chat) to agree synchronously on our work flow. Then we'll be able to directly collaborate on her online spreadsheet, or a copy of it, then we'll probably use e-mail too, according to evolving situations.

And the same will obtain for collaborating on other CAPs: the tools used will be determined by the nature of the CAP, the tech preferences of the people collaborating in it, the various situations arising in the preparation.

Only when CAPs are ready to launch can they be bookmarked, and announced in a topic, of this Diigo group. But first they must be announced on the blog, so that they can be Diigo-bookmarked with appropriate tag/s.

Conversely, there is no real reason for limiting the use of this group's topics to announcing CAPs. They could also be used to discuss publicly a theme treated by several sites.

For instance the US nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System on Nov. 11 has been announced in different ways on different sites, with an effort to be accessible to deaf people. This has caused discussions that went off-topic in our private Google Group. But if we bookmarked these pages here with a single common tag - say, EAS-test - we could then also have a topic here for discussing them publicly and more freely.

This wouldn't be a discussion about a CAP, but a CAP might emerge from it, or part of it might come in handy for an existing CAP. For instance, confusion arising by interferences between too many accessibility means interfering with each other might be relevant to the advocacy of closed captioning - which can be switched off by those who don't want captions - as preferable to "open captioning", i.e. captions directly encrusted in the video, which users cannot switch off. Etc.

Hi Lauren,

I suggested Diigo when you mentioned the difficulty to follow all statements that might relate to CAPs in the Google group. I explained that Diigo was a social bookmarking site that allows you to describe the content of socially bookmarked pages by adding tags to the bookmarks. I gave the example of http://groups.diigo.com/group/etcjournal (the Diigo group for etcjournal.com). And you agreed that we try a Diigo group.

When you said you didn't understand what tags were and thought other members of CCAC might not either, I pointed to the "Social Bookmarking in Plain English" closed captioned and transcribed video tutorial .

How come you interpreted these explanations as meaning that a Diigo group might be a forum for working on CAPs I don't know. As I already wrote, though Diigo groups do have a kind of forum with the "topics feature", and though it is possible to add comments to each bookmark, Diigo is not primarily meant for forums.

When you rightly objected that the name for the group must be changed, it only took me 3 minutes to make a new group, move the content from the first to the second one and re-invite people who had joined the former to the latter.

So really, if you think that socially bookmarking and describing pages related to closed captioning and accessibility in an easily retrievable way is of no use to CCAC, I'm fine with deleting this group. Or if you prefer to try it for a little longer, I'm fine with that too.

Best

Claude

Thank you for your very complete and clear explanations, Lauren. About your question "At the same time, perhaps you find the CCAC web pages called "Articles and Resources" to be unhelpful?": not at all, they are great resources. So I've bookmarked and tagged these pages here, to illustrate how Diigo tagging can help retrieving particular ones.

In the "Top 10 Tags" part on the right of the main http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning page of this group, click e.g. on the CCAC tag to only have links to pages from the official CCAC sites.

You get to the http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/CCAC page that lists them all, and on the right, there is now a "Related tags" list, with a "+" sign before each tag.

If you click on this "+" sign, the results will only mention pages that have been tagged with both the CCAC tag and the related tag. For instance, if you click on the "+" before "articlesandresources", you will get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/articlesandresources%20CCAC - i.e. "Group items tagged CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of the CCAC's articles and resources pages, with again a list of related tags on the right, and above it a list of selected tags (more about that one below)

If you are interested in CCAC articles and resources about legal aspects, you can click on the + before the Law related tag and you'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/Law%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. " "Group items tagged Law CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of CCAC's articles and resources pages dealing with legal issues.

If you now want to explore CCAC's articles and resources pages about, say "advocacy", you can remove the "Law" tag by clicking on the "-" sign in the list of selected tags, and click on the "+" before "advocacy". You'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/advocacy%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. "Group items tagged advocacy articlesandresources CCAC".

And so on: playing with these + and - signs is a really neat way to narrow down, steer and widen searches, potentially over all the CCAC sites (main, blog, google group) once the blog and google group get bookmarked too

****

Then each bookmark can include a quotation from the page (by just highlighting the text when you do the bookmark, but I often edit the quotedtext before posting, to shorten it) and a comment.

For instance, in http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/why-captioning-in-transportation-collaborative-for-communication-access-via-captioning-3601718 , I have included a quotation:
"From John Waldo and the WA-CAP in Washington State. An excellent illustration of the sort of captioning inclusion we need in many forms of transportation - ferries, trains, buses, airplanes, cruise ships - copied with permission from this important advocacy site online. (...)
Installation of the visual paging system is being done to resolve a lawsuit that the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) brought against WSF in 2008. The suit was quickly resolved in the form of an agreed order signed by the court. WSF has been working promptly and diligently to implement the terms of that order, and deserves our commendation and thanks."

and a comment:

"Originally published at http://www.hearinglosslaw.com/2010/11/articles/washcap-1/washington-state-ferries/ferry-system-to-install-messagedisplay-system/ - check hearinglosslaw.com for further bookmarking."

Of course, content of the private google group must not be quoted this way in this Diigo group's bookmarks, but comments and tags can be added in those bookmarks too.

So OK, let's try this group for a further week and then we see?

****
Finally, about http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/, you write "Someone else helped me with the CCACblog - as you know, a free wordpress site. Yet I am not skilled enough to explore that and use it in a richer way, e.g. for a newsletter. At the moment, I don't have time to write new blogs either, which I think are sorely needed in order to build our audience there."

You already have an e-mail subscription link on the right column of the blog. What you or the other person might perhaps add in the right column is links to the RSS feeds
- for the posts: http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/feed/
- for the comments: http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/comments/feed/

I've done that in mine, http://almansi.wordpress.com/ , via the widget managing page of the admin interface, just as for the e-mail subscription link you already have.

"CART, Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Mobile CART at the Met by Ruth D. Bernstein I'm a volunteer for the Access Programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), (on Facebook and here.) It's a job I really enjoy, that is why I was pleased to take a walk into the future in the spring of 2011 when I took part in the first demonstration of a mobile CART system at the Met presented by Ms. Mirabai Knight. I attended this very special gallery tour with Rebecca McGinnis, the Met's Access Coordinator and Deepa Shastri, Live Events Programme Officer of London's STAGETEXT."

"From John Waldo and the WA-CAP in Washington State. An excellent illustration of the sort of captioning inclusion we need in many forms of transportation - ferries, trains, buses, airplanes, cruise ships - copied with permission from this important advocacy site online. (...) Installation of the visual paging system is being done to resolve a lawsuit that the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) brought against WSF in 2008. The suit was quickly resolved in the form of an agreed order signed by the court. WSF has been working promptly and diligently to implement the terms of that order, and deserves our commendation and thanks."

Originally published at http://www.hearinglosslaw.com/2010/11/articles/washcap-1/washington-state-ferries/ferry-system-to-install-messagedisplay-system/ - check hearinglosslaw.com for further bookmarking.

"CCAC Letter for distribution. If you copy and use this, please credit this website and the CCAC. Below the letter is more information about why captioning is needed in this "category of life." For immediate distribution (March 2011) (...) Due to the importance of this assistive technology, the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) recognizes CART as an auxiliary aid that is considered an effective communication access for those who depend on it. Not only is it an effective assistive technology for those with hearing loss, but also, captioning is useful for people who are learning "English as a second language, children learning how to read and visual learners". (...)"

"US OPEN TENNIS - SEPTEMBER 2011 - FIRST TIME INCLUSION OF CAPTIONING (...) Closed-captioning is required for television programming in the United States. If a sporting event is shown in a noisy bar, gym or other public venue, oftentimes the audio is muted, and all patrons, even the hearing patrons, benefit from the closed-captioning. In a stadium or arena, once again, all patrons can benefit from open captioning displayed on the ribbon board or giant video boards. The acoustics in some stadiums make it difficult to understand the announcements. This is particularly important if there is an emergency. With the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, the hard-of-hearing population is increasing. Many people with age-related hearing loss do not consider themselves hard-of-hearing and are not aware of services offered. If captioning were available everywhere for everyone, nobody would ever be left out of the conversation again! Prepared for the CCAC by: Jennifer M. Bonfilio, RMR-CBC-CCP | President of Operations | Coast 2 Coast Captioning"

"WHY CART FOR…COURTS, JUSTICE An article from the NCRA Journal of Court Reporting from years ago, by Deanna Baker CCAC: This gives us a wonderful first hand report of the experience of a CART professional. We can all imagine how important the "language of real time text" was for the person who required it. The CCAC aims to add first hand reports from "consumers" also. (...)"

"Real Time Captioning for Employment and Work Settings (Captioning and CART) Prepared by the CCAC (Collaborative for Communication Access via Captioning, a voluntary grass-roots advocacy and education network, see www.ccacaptioning.org) October 2011 Thirty six million Americans today are deaf, deafened, or have a hearing loss, roughly one person in every ten (a conservative estimate). For communication access that allows them to participate and contribute their skills and expertise throughout the lifespan, quality inclusion of captioning is essential for many. Accessible communication technologies have advanced in recent years, especially services and systems providing speech-to-text translation. This is a brief overview of captioning considerations for employers and employees on captioning inclusion, benefiting not only all with hearing needs, but many others with language differences. (...)"

"(...) Theater and cultural events no longer need to be off limits to patrons who are deaf or have a hearing loss. Open captioning provides accessibility to individuals who otherwise may not attend theatrical or cultural events due to their hearing loss. It is a service that can and should be provided on a regular basis at all events. Oftentimes, as an aging population experiences a hearing loss, activities they once enjoyed, such as an evening at the theatre, become a source of frustration when the words and lyrics become indecipherable. They no longer attend theatrical events and often develop an isolated and withdrawn lifestyle. (People of all ages have hearing loss also.) (...) Prepared for the CCAC by TRCS Turner Reporting & Captioning Services, Inc. (..) "

"Before anything else - please review this: http://www.ada.gov/comprob.htm Your local, state or national government needs to include you - For one example, a few CCAC members are asking for captioning inclusion for town meetings - very important. Not easy to find access. And then, with captioning streamed online too - can be done! Some towns are already doing this, and we say thanks. (...)"

"See this also: http://www.ada.gov/hospcombr.htm from the ADA, it's the law. Communicating with your physician or any healthcare provider is always vital, and sometimes also a matter of life and death. Could there be a better reason for full verbatim real time text (CART) for those who require it? Even if it's a "routine" check-up, one "usual" follow-up visit, a first meeting with a new provider, a conference to help care for a loved one, an emergency room visit, or a health education video handed to you for cancer treatment, CART or captions will serve thousands if not millions. Why? 37 million is the current estimate of people with deafness or hearing loss in the USA alone. Not all need CART. Some use hearing aids or other listening devices for full speech comprehension. (Keep in mind many hearing aids wind up in drawers, never to be seen again, because hearing aids do not cure hearing loss, and are uncomfortable for many; the result is that some deny any hearing loss and learn to "bluff" extremely well). CART is a universally appropriate language (in whatever language you use) for all who can read. It is used by people who are deaf also (though some prefer sign language). CART provides an easy record (transcript) of what is said for best health and for proper treatments. While talking with your provider, while you or the nation is paying for the best healthcare one hopes to find, it's essential not to miss a word."

"FROM THE CCAC AND YOU: DEAR EDUCATION LEADERS, PARENTS, STUDENTS AND SCHOOL SYSTEMS, Equal Communication Access includes Captioning and CART in Education: One Good Example? Include CART at Graduation this year! Why plan for inclusion of quality captioning now? Let us count some of the good reasons. CART and captioning is needed for: 1 Learning to read 2 To learn languages 3 For transcripts and record-keeping 4 For "search" and knowledge-building online 5 For "equal communication access" for millions of students of all ages with different hearing loss and deafness. Captioning is our "ramp" for equal access Too many educational materials today, e.g. videos of all sorts, do not have full verbatim captioning. Too many school events do not plan for CART (full quality real time speech-to-text provided by a professional on site, or remotely). Too many students and teachers have insufficient knowledge about this need and choice --to understand the benefits of captioning inclusion."