Today I found out the real reason why Hulu.com has closed captions, and it is NOT because Hulu.com planned to be accessible from the very start. Here is the true story, which took place while Hulu.com was still in beta, closed to the public.
An interpreter for a class I am taking this week told me the true story. The interpreter's wife is deaf and the interpreter has a brother whose friend works as a programmer for Hulu. His deaf wife wanted captions on Hulu, and so his brother talked with his friend about getting captions added to Hulu. The friend needed to convince his supervisor to let him write a program to have captions display on Hulu.
The interpreter suggested that to convince the boss, the programmer should not focus on the deaf and hard of hearing access factor, but instead tell the boss that Hulu would be more successful if it had closed captions. Why? People watching video on Hulu secretly at work, could hide their video viewing from the boss by turning off the sound and using the captions. Husbands and wives could watch silently without disturbing each other. The boss agreed, and gave the go ahead for developing this program, at minimal cost.
This story begs the question: Would Hulu.com have closed captions today if not for this "deaf connection?" Based on the deaf community's experience to date with new media being inaccessible, my theory is that Hulu.com would not have captions today if it were not for the interpreter's wife, his brother, and his brother's friend. The interpreter agreed that my theory was probably, unfortunately, correct.
Update 6/4: I asked Hulu.com how they are captioning. Their answer confirmed what some people have been saying, and also demonstrates Hulu's commitment to captioning despite the work involved:
We ask all our content providers for caption files. Some have them available,
others do not or are still working on it. Then we try to read the caption files as
there are many formats.
Then, if we can read the file, we have someone sit and watch the video and sync
the captions to the video as timings are often off because broadcast timing may
differ from the online video file timing for a variety of reasons.
We've been able to increase our coverage a lot just by sheer effort. We still have
room to improve our coverage through that means. There will be some portion that
will require other solutions, and we'll continue to investigate.
Captions are a priority for us, and we'll continue to push to make them more of a
standard for online video.
Related Blog Post: Netflix CEO An Insensitive B******
In my opinion, this story also shows just how much of a problem we have with regard to development of new media businesses. We desperately need new legislation to require media companies to incorporate accessibility into their planning.
Seems it’s a common thing where accessibility of any sort is an afterthought. This is where it becomes more expensive. Just like a building without wheelchair ramps, it takes more time and money to add it in.
Over time, I’ve found hearing people want captions/subtitles for various reasons, not including hearing loss.
Thanks for sharing, Jamie.
I agree that we need to get people on the captioning bandwagon by pointing out that it is not only for the Deaf and the HoH.
Introducing new legislation will take YEARS at best..especially with our politicans worried about getting re-elected, the economy in general, and stuff like that… I believe that we need to focus on Netflix and only Netflix.
Because HULU rocks – they listened to their customers.
hey, myself i am a deaf. But having close captioned movies from HULU.com is a wonderful for me to travel and watch some tv shows.
I realized that its not for deaf people or hard of hearing people.
Our soldiers who have lost their hearing during the war. They would wanted to have CC to meet their satisfied. So they can rock HULU too! CUZ HULU HAVE LISTENED TO THEIR CUSTOMERS!
-Smitty
http://www.myspace.com/adamalexander3
This anecdote demonstrates why market-based arguments work much more effectively in persuading businesses to provide accessibility to the disabled than rights-based arguments, or appealing to their generosity.
Arguments in favor of providing services such as captions are much stronger when you can demonstrate that the feature is a value-add to their existing product (i.e. it provides a feature that would be desired by the target consumer demographic and give them a competitive advantage), or it expands their potential target consumer market by a favorable percentage with minimal effort and at low cost.
In actuality, it would be pretty ridiculous for the audience of hearing people who would want to use closed captions secretly to be perceived as being so much larger than the audience of deaf AND hard of hearing people (more than 30 million in the USA).
Most people have no idea how many hard of hearing people there are, that the majority are under the age of 65, and that most are not at all visible to others since they don’t use sign language and don’t even use hearing aids. (Only a minority of hard of hearing people use hearing aids in the U.S.A.) Many people with clinical hearing loss don’t even realize that they have a hearing loss, but they’ll be good candidates for turning on captions because they think their communication difficulties are due to external factors, like “other people mumble” or “the music is too loud” or the “audio isn’t good.”
I would certainly hope that Hulu didn’t think a major audience for their services would be watching videos secretly at work! (In keeping with the humorous “alien plot” of Hulu’s commercials, that would be a great way for aliens to contribute to the downfall of the U.S. economy as well as turning our minds into green mush!)
It certainly would be interesting to find out *why* customers at Hulu turn on Hulu’s captioning features and how often they use them. In some cases, the reasons might be quite unexpected. (Even people with spelling problems can benefit from captioning because the association between the sound of the word and the visual image can painlessly help them realize their first mental image of the word is incorrect.)
Here’s what I left at the closed captioning Netflix site:
Can Netflix spell prejudice? Does Netflix know what prejudice means? Here’s a definition by New York State Attorney General A.M. Cuomo: “Discrimination is not always a result of hatred or prejudice. It can also be a result of ignorance, indifference, and carelessness. In either case, the result is segregation, exclusion, or the denial of equal treatment. There is no more important mission today, in the state of this country, than working to end the crippling effects discrimination holds over our society.”
So, like Blacks and other minorities in this country were made to do, we, the deaf, are still made to ride in the back of the bus and give up our seats, because the majority doesn’t want to be inconvenienced by us: (per Neil Hunt of Netflix) “The majority of viewers would object to English captions on English content.”
I can smell smoke, like the smoke that rose out of the Hadamar, where the Nazi’s exterminated the deaf. “Majority” is not always a good thing. The majority can be Nazis, too.
Perhaps it is time for boycotting. I ask that not only the deaf community boycott Netflix, but also all minorities who have know the pain of prejudice, as well as those who would be friends to the deaf community. Boycott Netflix. Show your integrity and be a Rosa Parks for the deaf community. Pass the word along. It’s time.