Can someone help me with a closed-captioning issue???

[Dappleganger]

I have a friend who depends on CC and he's quite upset that the live stream of the SOTU wasn't in CC online at whitehouse.gov. I do know that C-Span had it in CC, and also that the speech was released to the public about an hour beforehand (it was all over twitter and other news sites).

First, I'm trying to find out if CC was on the government live-stream and 2nd whose responsibility is it to make it available in that format? We're trying to fix a problem, not just complain. Thanks!

[SoCalDem]

1. Isn;t that an option on the tv set? Maybe someone accidentally pushed a button

I do that from time to time, and then can't remember how to UNdo the CC:)

[Dappleganger]

2. From all that I have found so far CC for the SOTU address was only on C-Span...

not everyone can afford both cable and internet. This gentleman is well under the poverty level and can only afford internet (he's in rural Alabama and a faithful democrat).

[SoCalDem]

4. Cspan may put one up later.. or try this site.. they may have a video

Watching Obama’s State of the Union Address 2010 Online
by nate on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | News
http://www.boncherry.com/blog/2010/01/26/watching-obamas-state-of-the-union-address-2010-online/

The 2010 State of the Union Address will be given by United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday, January 27, 2010, to a joint session of Congress. It will be aired on all the major networks starting at 9 PM ET. It will be Obama’s first State of the Union Address, though the president did give a non-State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress a month after taking office in 2009. The speech will be delivered on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. Sitting behind the president will be the presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


Among the topics that Obama plans to cover in his speech are proposals to cut the federal deficit and job creation.

source: Wikipedia

The White House won’t be the only one streaming the event live. Obama is known to draw record-breaking crowds online. The administration’s recent health care troubles only add to the political drama, with everyone from CNN to C-SPAN will covering the event live as well.

The White House is streaming the speech at www.whitehoue.gov/live. Users will also be able to embed the stream into their own sites, and the official White House iPhone application that will carry the stream can be found on the iTunes app store (link will open in iTunes).

Facebook users will be able to watch the State of the Union speech on that site, thanks to another official White House application, this time one that combines the video feed with status updates. However, the feed wasn’t working for me when Obama welcomed the Lakers to the White House on Monday, so we’ll have to wait and see whether it will be fixed in time.

CNN is once again cooperating with Facebook to cover the State of the Union address. The network will start with its online coverage of the speech at 8 p.m. EST, and the whole speech as well as the GOP’s response will be shown next to comments from Facebook users.

C-SPAN will show the video on its site and accompany it with a transcript based on closed captions in near-real time.

YouTube will air the speech live on its Citizentube channel, with a twist: The site will stream suggestions from its users on how to improve the economy, as well as our schools, climate change and national security issues. The Citizentube coverage will come complete with commentary by General Wesley Clark, economist Nouriel Roubini, Newsweek editor Fareed Zakari and NASA climatologist Jim Hansen. YouTube is calling this “Your State of the Union,” and the whole show will start at 8 p.m. EST.

Update:

Hulu will stream the entire event online as well, complete with the ability to embed its player into third-party websites.

[Travelman]

3. Hmmmm....

Frankly, it's never crossed my mind before, but I don't recall ever seeing any sort of online stream that gave an option on captions. I suppose they could run two streams, one with captions and one without. I don't think that the codec is the stream player can work to decode CC in the same way that it is done on broadcast/cable transmissions.

IOW, I think you're talking about horses of two totally different colors here.


But, I'm certainly no expert on the issue.

[Dappleganger]

5. That's what we're trying to find out...

if the WH has a video available to the public, are they bound by the ADA to make it available in CC as well? We're trying to find out what the law requires now, and if it doesn't address online videos that could be a problem for the White House.

[csziggy]

7. I think it a really good issue to bring up since so many are moving

To internet video feed. I've used closed captioning to keep the sound off when watching TV while hubby is sleeping in the next room. It was especially valuable to me while he was working nights or when I was unable to sleep.

As far as I know for over the air or cable video CC is generally done by whatever channel is supplying the feed. At the end of a broadcast, I've often seen "closed captioning provided by --------------" and sometimes credit for whoever is financing it.

Here is the FCC fact sheet on CC: http://www.captions.org/factsheet.cfm

It gives the requirements for and exemptions to CC as well as how to complain about it. Since the current law was implemented in 1996, I don't think anyone thought to include internet video feeds, but they also are not specifically exempt, so this seems to be an area that needs to be addressed.

[Dappleganger]

11. Thanks, I'm passing all this info on for him.

He'll write the emails and letters, but wants help to find who to send them to (and for me to edit them, that's my thing ;)).

[Dappleganger]

6. Here is the bill itself, it was signed into law in October last year.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ260/html/PLAW-111publ260.htm

[csziggy]

8. Hmm, the FCC fact sheet I linked to above did not indicate an update had been done

Interesting. Thanks for finding that.

[Travelman]

10. I'm no attorney, but

there's a whole lot of "shall recommend to the committee" and "if feasible" in there. I haven't read it letter-for-letter, but on its face it doesn't look terribly binding as far as demanding that one party or another provide captioning, or how that should be done. It looks to me like a law requiring that someone, somewhere, some time needs to maybe look at doing this, but it doesn't really have to be done now.

The simple way to do that, and something that the WH really should do right away, is simply put two different links for a video feed: one has captions, one does not. Certainly for any archived video this would be a piece of cake to do, though I suppose it does mean taking up more server space because you're basically doubling the amount of video that you have. I'm pretty sure that the White House can find some server space somewhere, though.

From a programming standpoint, I'm not really certain about the practicalities of doing the same with a feed that is actually live. I suppose for something that is a prepared speech, it should be relatively easy to just feed the text of the speech along the bottom of the screen, though that leaves out the bits like "applause" and such. For something that is not prepared remarks, I guess they just have to have a transcriptionist put in the captions, and I just don't know how that would work in an MPEG or whatever that is live. Maybe some sort of separate stream that just has a pop-up box that shows the text, and then the user can drag-and-drop that box to where ever they are comfortable with on the window? Just thinking out loud here....

[Dappleganger]

12. There is precedent for a whitehouse.gov feed to have CC.

There is a video he saw which was live-feed with CC on the whitehouse.gov site before, he's just trying to find it. I'm with him, that anything on that government website should be accessible by any American with a disability. Closed-captioning is not asking for too much.

[Travelman]

13. Oh, I definitely agree

that there should be some sort of access/accommodation for the deaf and the hard of hearing. I was just thinking out loud on the practical/technical aspects of how to make that happen.

[wtbymark]

9. As far as I know....

Broadcast web encoders do not have the ability to encode CC. Maybe it's the MPEG video format, wherein broadcast uses HD/SDI>ASI data streams.