Created for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing, it is often implemented across
television programming via video captioning and now on the Internet with many
other sharing services and YouTube. The primary advantage of these services is
to provide a suitable visual interpretation through symbol or text of televised
audio content including sound, music and language effects.
The first demonstration of captioning services was for the Hearing Impaired in
1971 at the First National Conference on Television. By 1976, PBS was a
significant proponent in engineering and transmitting the technology of
captioning http://vanancaptioning.net/Captioning-Services.php to television viewers for pre recorded programs.
This process involved the use of highly skilled individuals capable of typing
over two hundred words a minute to produce captions in close. Public television
station WGBH TV in Boston, one of the earliest users of closed captioning,
remains a significant producer of captions.
Through the influence of the newly created National Captioning Institute, in
1980, commercial television stations started routinely scheduled uses of closed
captioning through a telecaption adapter. Large steps have already been taken
in the last 30 years to make closed captioning more readily accessible to the
Deaf and hard-of-hearing. The technology is now programmed into televisions
making adapters outdated. In 2014, the FCC approved implementing quality
standards that were higher for text-based interface, ensuring that progress in
these technologies continues.
Captions are like subtitles but may contain in addition to dialog other audio
information symbolic representations of music, for example sound effects, and
may signal the loudspeaker when this advice isn't clearly apparent visually.
The words captions and subtitles are often used interchangeably, but the main
distinction between the two is that subtitles presume the sound track can be
heard by audience but for some reason find it unintelligible. Captions,
however, are intended primarily for an audience which is not able or has
difficulty hearing the sound track.
