The first television program to be captioned was Julia Child’s world renowned cooking show, “The French Chef.” Since then the captioning process has opened the door for the hard-of-hearing, allowing a full, rewarding television experience, much like a person with full hearing capabilities and no hearing loss.
The first television program to be captioned was Julia Child’s world renowned cooking show, “The French Chef.” Since then the captioning process has opened the door for the hard-of-hearing, allowing a full, rewarding television experience, much like a person with full hearing capabilities and no hearing loss. Today the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has played a large role in regulating television captions, and with the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, all televisions larger than 13 inches sold in the United States after July 1993, must have an internal decoder to allow for the option of closed-captions
Plus, as the growth of the HDTV has taken the television world by storm, currently captions are available on certain televisions which can even be adjusted to meet a viewer’s personal preferences including font and color. Advances that were taken lightly in the world of captioning are now being taken into more and more of a higher account. As the world of captioning grows, the competitive business of video captioning requires video, DVD, and those within the movie industry to find efficient and meticulous captioning services that will not only benefit those hard-of-hearing, but all other television watchers as well. With proper captioning services, the contemporary American television viewer can gain a better understanding of plot, characters, and other essential pieces of everyday television programs and movies.
How else can captions be considered beneficial? There are an abundance of reasons as to why captions are helpful, but some of the less obvious reasons lie in the fact that today’s culture of cartoon-watchers and product consumers can become more educated simply through captions. When watching a weekly cooking show or a thrilling horror film, how often do you recognize a new word? That’s right, usually you don’t quite catch it, and as watching television is, more often than not, a source of entertainment. One doesn’t jump up from the couch or bed to go look the word up in the dictionary that they think they may have possibly heard and didn’t recognize. With captioning, vocabulary is improved almost on a subconscious level, and unlike the introduction of words through reading, when watching television, much less thought and attention are necessary; words along the bottom of the screen are soaked in with almost no mind effort. The other, almost obvious, but also more than likely overlooked plus of captions, is an increase in spelling knowledge. Several high-functioning, intelligent individuals are the first to say “I’m no speller,” which although is no crime, can often have a negative effect in professional and everyday situations, making those with intelligence appear quite the opposite!
