Hard of Hearing Person Frustrated by Captions
Tuesday September 2, 2008
10Walt posted on the forum:
I am HOH and wear hearing aids. When watching TV I turn closed captions on with the thought that they would help catch the words I miss here and there. Wrong! CC is so bad I wonder how a profoundly deaf person could understand what's being said. Words misspelled, names usually omitted, sometimes even a different thought is conveyed. I feel for the deaf person trying to make sense out of the CC. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem with CC.Add your comments to the forum.
Comments
haha, i am deaf and wear hearing aid, sure sometimes CC can be messed up alittle but does not happen very much. CC is almost always perfect on my tv, i been using CC since i was 8 on tv, so i gotten used to misspelled words or something like that. i usually figure out what being said quickly when it alittle mess up lol… so it does not bother me, but it only bothers me when a tv show suppose to have CC but CC never showed up on tv. that all, so it just takes time for u to get used to it…
I’ve lived all sides of hearing loss, it seems — grew up HOH with hearing aids, went totally deaf this year (as an adult), and now have CI’s. I knew closed captioning was often very wrong but when I lost all my hearing, I had no choice but to rely on it.
My family would usually alert me to gross errors in the captioning; “Mom! I know it said 12 months on the captioning but they really said 7 months”…things like that. There are also a lot of things that are not captioned, so I would have to ask my family, “Wait…is there a noise that’s making them act that way?” and they would tell me “Oh yea, there’s rustling in the bushes” (or whatever).
You’re right, it definitely needs work!!
You’re both right, it needs work and when it disappears at the worst times in the plot, it is definitely maddening. Usually I can guess when a word is wrong or misspelled, but there have been times I have switched channels hurriedly in order to follow a news story properly when the captions are bad.
My pet peeve is when the captions are out of sync with the speakers and I can no longer tell which is the good guy or bad guy.
The HD TV channels continue to be horrible and problematic!!!! I watch my normal channels not the HD tv’s because of the very CC issues. I have FIOS and the CC’s are really crappy at times. Issue isn’t just on FIOS but being experienced by other HD providers.
I use Time Warner HD service on my samsung 40″ and the captions are good and clear. I’ve see crappy captioning before and the problem usually lies in the reception.
I am a mother to a daughter with severe/profound hearing loss. I have written to many networks because I see variances when watching different channels. For example, CNN is better than Nickelodean (sp?). How can we make it better? Who do we contact? I’m at a loss.
Closed captioning can be handy when it is done correctly. Most of the time the words are all jumbled or they are way off from the scene. Sometimes you only get half the words. What gets me the most is on news programs when something was pretaped and they still do not add captions. I am so frustrated watching tv. I have only been deaf a few year and really can not stang to watch news programs anymore because you do not know what is happening.
Generally the biggest difference I see is between “live” captioning (such as of the news, sports events, etc), versus general programming (tv shows, etc, that have had the captioning done before broadcast).
I have also gotten used to the misspellings and such (it really helps if you understand the phonetic basis for the errors, which not all deaf people will) and in other cases, such as soccer games, I turn it off entirely; even error free sports commentary is transcribed with such a lag, it makes no sense next to the play on the screen!
That all said, I mostly watch DVD’s anyway, and they’re fine. Except for the few left that (STILL) aren’t captioned, I do run across a few in my netflix subscription now and then and I take a big marker to the damn thing noting it has no captions.
Hi Everyone,
Here in England we are supposed to have subtitles when any Programme is on, However, the spelling leaves a lot to be desired (I often wonder if the person doing the subtitles actually knows how to spell even Basic words)!.
There are no outlets here to provide for Deaf or Hard of Hearing people.
I sympathize with any child who has hearing problems.
In this day and age it is not acceptable for children,( & adults), to be expected to live in these Victorian Times.
Elaine
When you see problems with closed captions (garbled, missing, etc.), please go to the “Viewer Relations Bureau” at www.CaptionsOn.com and file a complaint. TV program providers won’t fix the captions if they don’t know there is a problem.
I got a really bad earache about a year ago, so bad that I lost the hearing out of my right ear;I already heard badly out of my left ear. When watching a movie I found myself putting on the English subtitles as well as having the volume up just so I knew what was going on. I agree it did not work as well I as I thought it would. I missed out on alot. The hearing miraculously came back to my right ear. Now the hearing in my right ear is extra sensitive and my left ear is still the same. Talk about ironic.