Story of the First Caption Action
Tuesday June 30, 2009
If you were born after 1975, you probably never heard of the first Caption Action. Caption Action was a national grassroots campaign to get closed captions on home video. And it was successful. The deaf and hard of hearing community and its hearing friends can learn lessons from the first Caption Action as it embarks upon a new captioning battle, to get captions on the Internet...Caption Action 2.
Caption Action's primary tactic was a petition drive. Today, that would not be an effective tactic. Much has changed in the over 20 years since the first Caption Action. Today, we must conduct our grassroots activity via the Internet.
Comments
Great article. We’re fortunate to have this firsthand account of the movement. Now I’m eager to find some of the press releases and articles you mentioned in your piece. I’d also love to read the full letter you wrote to Spanky, your graduate thesis (which I’m assuming was on this subject), and that magic formula for ensuring success.
Sean Zdenek