For years the deaf and hard of hearing community has been asking Yahoo to update its video player to add support for closed captioning. When we recently asked Yahoo about it, the response was that they were "working hard" to get it done but could not give an exact date. Our feeling is that we have waited long enough! It is time to give Yahoo a big push to make adding closed captioning support a number 1 priority. How are we going to do it? A petition! Caption Action 2 leader Robert Goodwin has started a petition on Change.org:
https://www.change.org/petitions/yahoo-inc-add-closed-captioning-support-now
We need big numbers to show Yahoo the deaf and hard of hearing community is serious about wanting them to add support for closed captioning, NOW.
Yahoo has a section on its website devoted to professional web video: screen.yahoo.com. Yahoo has also recently made big investments in professional video and one result is the recently launched, high-profile Tom Hanks-produced web series Electric City. (Electric City is at electriccity.yahoo.com). In addition, top Yahoo web series such as "Burning Love" frequently turn up on media lists of web series.
How much of a priority are we at Yahoo? Obviously we, the deaf and hard of hearing (and hearing who use captions and subtitles) are not much of one! It looks like for the launch of Electric City, Yahoo added a special feature: voice translation in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. But they could not be bothered to stop and think "What about captions? Shouldn't we add closed captioning support?"
Yahoo is behind other web video players: Hulu, Google (YouTube), Netflix, DailyMotion, and Blip all added support for closed captioning a long time ago. How hard can it be to add support for closed captioning if all those others have already done it? Yahoo can afford to pay their new CEO $71 million as has been reported in the news. Thus, they certainly can afford to invest in an immediate upgrade to their video player to add closed captioning support.
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