Test & Measurement Feature | Closed Captioning
A PICTURE SAYS A THOUSAND WORDS
KJ Kandell, director of product management for Nexidia Media and Entertainment, provides an insight into legal and technical requirements of automated caption and language verification.
KJ Kandell, Director of Product Management for Nexidia Media and Entertainment
Most of us have spent time watching television in an airport boarding area, sports bar, doctor’s waiting room, or some other public place where closed captions appeared on the screen. And at some point, most of us have had the experience of noticing that the captions couldn’t possibly match what was on the monitor.
FCC regulations have evolved to include requirements for caption correctness. Consumers that encounter issues are encouraged to report them to the FCC, and once an issue is reported, the burden of proof is on the broadcaster to show that there were no problems.
Issues with captions, also called subtitles, tend to vary a great deal. Perhaps the captions were out of time with the action by several seconds (or even more). Perhaps the wrong words, or sometimes just meaningless
symbols, appeared. Maybe the captions were written in the wrong language. Whatever the case, clearly mistakes had been made. Mistakes like those might be distracting or annoying for the average viewer, but for people with hearing impairments who rely on captions, those mistakes not only ruin the experience, they can even keep those viewers from receiving vital news or information.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States long ago began enacting a series of laws to address captions, and other government entities around the world have done the same. The U.S. Congress passed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, giving the FCC authority to adopt video description rules that require the top national broadcasters and nonbroadcast networks to provide
K J Kandell | Nexidia
Now, for the first time, the FCC has regulatory reach into actual IP- based content.
at least 50 hours per quarter of video-described prime-time and/or children’s programming.
A more recent FCC ruling took captions into the internet realm, saying that TV networks and web video sites must provide closed captions for any TV content available online by the end of
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| May/June 2013
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ibeconnects.com
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