Cheers and Dismay at New YouTube CrowdSourced Captioning

We knew it was coming. Crowdsourced captioning for YouTube! Would we finally be able to stop the begging for captions on YouTube or at least reduce it sharply? Doesn't look like it! Here is why:

According to the new support page "Contributing subtitles and closed captions" on YouTube, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6054623,  YES, people can create captions for YouTube videos. BUT, the channels have to be voluntarily participating!

 Expand that "+" and you get a list of who is participating currently.

What is the problem with this? The problem is that word "Participating." Unless a channel is participating - voluntarily - there won't be any crowd sourced captioning. If they are participating, and if they have enabled this feature for the video, you will see this when you select the CC icon (if the CC icon is turned on at all). Otherwise, you won't see this.

So, cheers to YouTube for providing another option for increasing captioning on YouTube. Dismay because of the requirement that channels be participating in order to have the crowd sourced captions. Which means the begging has to continue. Only it will now have the newly added plea, "Could you participate in the YouTube Crowdsourced Captioning option?"

Join Caption Action 2

Join Caption Action 2 on Facebook!

Reading Rainbow Adds Link to Captioned Kickstarter Video!

It took a week of trying, but today Caption Action 2 succeeded in getting the popular Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign to add a prominent link to their closed captioned Kickstarter video! (Unfortunately, Kickstarter's video player does NOT support closed captioning and whenever there is a really hot campaign, Caption Action 2 has to ask the campaign to either create a captioned version of the video or put in an easy-to-find link to the closed captioned version).

What is Reading Rainbow and why is it important for deaf and hard of hearing children? Reading Rainbow does not teach reading; it encourages children to LOVE reading. Deaf and hard of hearing children often struggle with learning English. It is therefore challenging to teach them how to read well. At the same time, frequent, voluntary reading (not just reading for school) is the key to reinforcing those hard-won English skills. That's where Reading Rainbow comes in!

LeVar Burton is the guy behind Reading Rainbow. You may remember him from either Roots or Star Trek.

People in the deaf and hard of hearing community can become backers of the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter for as little as $1. If you are a little more flush ($375) you can adopt an entire classroom of deaf and hard of hearing children, and if you are REALLY flush ($5,000) you can adopt an entire school for the deaf!

Last but not least, here is the message from Reading Rainbow confirming they added the link today. Note their frustration with Kickstarter for not enabling closed captioning on their video player!

Join Caption Action 2

Join Caption Action 2 on Facebook!

Update! Fake Captioning Has Not Stopped!

Update on The Young Turks' fake captioning! We thought they had stopped, because we didn't see any more after "Flash Grenade Explodes in Infant's Face/Drug War's Latest Victim," which was posted 5/30/2014, which was the same day as our blog post "Watch Out for Fake Captioning!"

Then, they apparently went back and fake-captioned already-posted videos, starting with "Obama Administration Sets New EPA Rules," which was posted 6/2/2014. Fake captioning has continued, with the latest one (as of this blog update) being posted 6/5/2014.

So that's their pattern. No fake captions for awhile, then go back and do the fake captioning. It seems they have no intention of stopping! As a reader of this blog pointed out, their attitude seems to be that the autocaptions are "good enough" and uploading those autocaptions as fake captions gets them the CC icon when it is not deserved!!

The source for these images and links is http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/videos.

What can we do? We are being ignored by these producers (tweeting, posting on facebook has been ignored), who pump out news videos and totally disregard the need of deaf and hard of hearing people for REAL captions. Fake captions are worse than no captions at all because fake captions fool people (deaf, hard of hearing, and others) because of the presence of the illegal CC icon!

Join Caption Action 2

Join Caption Action 2 on Facebook!