Currently there are very few online videos from Australian websites that are captioned.
None of the major TV channel or newspaper websites in Australia caption their online videos.
Many US-based online blogs of deaf and hearing impaired people report better captioning of online videos on the websites of big corporates, such as NBC – which provides movies and episodes of TV shows to US audiences only – apparently captioned.
Hulu.com, which is a website that offers dozens of television series to click and watch, recently added a filter to its search engine to return only closed-captioned videos. Sadly, Australian internet users can’t access these online videos as they can only be streamed from the United States. However, it is good to know that these changes are happening in the US, as there is hope that these changes will filter through to us here.
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. It is a fascinating site which has had a huge social impact. Some videos have been picked up and discussed widely by mainstream media.
The signing deaf community has found a niche on this site, as they can create videos of people signing.
YouTube has also added captioning/subtitle support to its videos, and when I did a search, there is even a video entitled “How to add closed captioning to YouTube videos”, which is created by the University of Oklahoma, and also has captions on it. Right now, however, YouTube doesn’t seem to offer a feature to search for captioned videos only.
I also found a captioning company called ‘SubPLY’ that will caption 5,000 YouTube videos submitted by user for free. If you are interested, you can read the details at this site – and submit a YouTube video you’d like to see captioned.
From a blog on http://www.deafdc.com/, Shane Feldman writes about ‘Project ReadOn’, an online service that offers to caption any videos for you free of charge.
The concept behind Project ReadOn is to allow universal access to online media content via their online video and caption player. To use it, you simply click on any thumbnail on the site and it will open up that content from the actual source and simultaneously and in perfect synch play captions in the player.
There is also a search engine dedicated to looking for captioned video and audio on the web. To use it, go to harkle.com, type in the name of the video you want, and Harkle finds it. They also offer a selection of videos.
As you can see, there are many innovations and projects out there that aim to open up these videos and media to everyone. But in Australia we are definitely lagging behind the world with our accessibility of online media.
If you would like to know more about media accessibility, visit the Media Access Australia site.
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