Jun 08
23

Obama and Captioning

6 Comments

I noticed that most of the media on Barack Obama’s website was not captioned. They did have a webpage that contained links to several captioned videos, but that’s it: the rest of the website wasn’t captioned with the exception of the disabilities issue page. So… I sent a message to the Obama administration:

“There’s a problem with the videos on the site. Majority of them are not closed-captioned. I’m deaf, and I’m also a member of the National Association of the Deaf, World Federation of the Deaf, as well as the California Association of the Deaf. I think I can speak for the Deaf community when I voice our collective dismay at being shut out of your media, and would like to strongly encourage you to caption all of your media, and all of the future ones. Please?”

Got a response immediately after:

Dear Don,

Thank you for contacting Obama for America.  The volume of messages we’re receiving has gone up since Barack’s victory in Iowa.  While we cannot respond individually to over a thousand messages per day, the level of interest and thoughtfulness of the comments reflected in these communications are very gratifying.  Your thoughts on our campaign and America’s future are greatly appreciated.

Individual citizens like you are the foundation of this campaign.

…

Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

The Correspondence Team
Obama for America

So in short, they’re saying thanks for the message, but don’t hold your breath waiting for a response. I shouldn’t be surprised. If the Obama administration actually gets around to responding, I’ll be sure to post their response here.

Posted in Deafness Politics by Don. 6 Comments

6 Responses to "Obama and Captioning"

  • Bill says:
    June 26, 2008 at 3:10 am
    Reply

    I believe he has to request ProjectReadon to have his videos captioned.

    Probably means that the most current videos haven’t been captioned yet.

  • Bill says:
    June 26, 2008 at 3:13 am
    Reply

    For instance, the political partners on our site have formed a simple ‘business agreement’ with us whereby we will caption 100 minutes of content for free, and then after that point they pay a modest amount to cover the costs of the captioning. This offer is open to any candidate, so we believe there is no reason that EVERY candidate shouldn’t use our service! We can’t caption their content without their permission, so this is an arrangement that we feel can benefit everyone.

    http://www.hearingexchange.com/blogs/?p=176

  • Don says:
    June 26, 2008 at 5:24 am
    Reply

    Interesting. Thanks for the information. But still, if the television stations can run captioning even for the sections that are live, then I see no particular reason why they cannot caption the media on their site so the deaf can view those media at the same time as the hearing rather than being forced to wait until they get around to having it captioned. Perhaps they should hire an in-house captioner?

    Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely appreciate their even captioning it at all, most candidates usually don’t bother. But still, I’d like to encourage Obama’s administration to adopt a “full prompt accessibility” approach rather than a partial one.

  • MM says:
    June 27, 2008 at 12:23 pm
    Reply

    Our British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, launched a blog site for the ‘people’ to ask him questions, that wasn’t captioned or deaf accessible either, we wrote and asked why, he never responded, join the club !

  • Don says:
    June 27, 2008 at 12:35 pm
    Reply

    MM– have you tried emailing Gordon Brown? What about calling him? Do you have a organization of the deaf over there in Britain similar to USA’s National Association of the Deaf? If so, have you tried involving that organization in getting the PM to be more deaf-accessible?

  • Don’s Blog » Blog Archive » Obama & Captioning Update says:
    June 27, 2008 at 1:31 pm
    Reply

    [...] reader, Bill Creswell (who is also a captioner himself) pointed out: I believe he has to request Project readOn to have his videos [...]

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