Many Americans alive today can’t remember a time when your primary source of entertainment wasn’t the TV, which supplies a steady stream of shows, movies and news right to your home; though for millions of Americans, that entertainment option has been nothing more than one long pantomime. In the year 1985, there were 21.2 million people who suffered from some form of hearing disability, which made up 9 percent of the entire American population. Today, that group of Americans can enjoy many of the shows that appear during prime time, morning talk shows and presidential debates, all because of closed captioning.
In 1979, a non profit foundation was developed by the U.S. government, and they are responsible for 90 percent of the TV shows’ subtitles and captioning. Not only have they captioned the television programs, they have also placed subtitles on thousands of movies as well. We find that the percentage of closed captioned shows is approximately 12 or 13 percent, when we consider a six major station market, with each station having 18 hours of programming daily. Out of all the shows that are closed captioned, children’s programs make up a third.
The main role of this organization is to get networks to caption as many of their programs as possible. Some of these people are surprisingly resistant to this idea. Many of these businesspeople are only now understanding that closed captions can open up their business to a much wider array of customers. We discovered when we contacted them that they had been completely unaware of how the needs of hearing impaired, or the deaf, were being ignored.
One factor that does not appeal to networks and producers is the fact that only around one million people make up the closed captioning audience. This number is determined from the fact that only around 150,000 homes have the decoder that allows them to view closed captions. However, they expect that number to rise by some 30,000 by the end of the year.
The way it works is the amount of programs that are captioned will bring in the viewers, which in turn will also boost the amount of programs that are captioned. The standard cost for closed captioning of a one hour show is between $1,500 and $2,200. The cost varies depending on such items as the complexity of the script and the amount of time provided to write the subtitles.
Other decisions must be made as well, such as when a caption should appear on the screen and what length of time will be needed for viewers to read it. Closed captioning is a quicker process when we are working with action movies. It is much easier to provide subtitles for Raiders of the Lost Ark than for A Man for All Seasons.
PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, and some corporations along with the Department of Education do help to fund captioning for some programs, and are subsidized by various foundations such as NCI. Costs are generally divided up with the network paying for a third of the costs, a sponsor or other fund paying another third and then the subsidizing corporation picking up the final third. The reason why use of the decoder did not grow as quickly as it might have initially was due in part to lack of public awareness and cost of the decoder. It cost $280 when it first came out, in 1980. However, the price eventually went down bringing the cost down to around a $200 average per unit.
There are grants available from certain foundations and corporations that are aiming to help low income deaf people get decoders for their homes. We are currently running a campaign in several major American cities to provide decoders for as little as $35; we want TV manufacturers to see that there is a demand for decoders and that the technology need not be expensive so that one day they’ll build TV’s with built-in decoders, just like stereos are today.
Hearing loss is a disability that is not noticed by many individuals in the U.S.. The invisible nature of the disability often means that the deaf or hearing impaired are often isolated from the culture at large, despite the fact that they comprise the largest group of physically disabled people. Closed captioning can overcome those invisible barriers between those who hear and those who are impaired, and allow them to enjoy TV together, as so many families do.
Learn more on the topic of tinnitus relief. You will gain a deeper understanding about pulsatile tinnitus by checking out that resource.