White House: Where is Leadership on Closed Captioning?

What Federal entity has not been providing adequate captioning? What Federal entity captions after posting videos? What Federal entity has not captioned a video after two weeks?

If you guessed the White House, go to the head of the class. On YouTube, there are captions, but selectively and often delayed. (http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse/videos). Even the Americans with Disabilities and the Arts video got posted without captions! That's bad enough. But now we have to confront lack of captions on Facebook too! 

On November 9, the White House finally gave the President a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/potus. This page is not Obama's personal page; it will be inherited by the next President. The page includes videos. The first video posted on November 9 has captions, but the second video, posted November 11, lacks captions! 

That second video has lacked captions since it was posted on November 11! That's roughly two weeks of no captions since! Not acceptable, especially since it is the White House! 

We have enough of a problem with the wrong attitude towards closed captioning online (too expensive, too time consuming, need to do it after the fact, and so on). We need leadership on online captioning to come from the top, and the top is the White House!

This is NOT a democratic OR republican issue. It has zilch to do with politics. It has to do with accessibility! If the White House Public Relations team doesn't get the message that they must caption BEFORE posting any video, how can we expect top YouTubers and web series producers to do the same?? There has to be leadership!

We are urging people who find this unacceptable to go to the new President's Facebook page and post a complaint below the video about the lack of captions. As of this writing, 11 people have posted complaints! It is an active page, so the complaints are most easily viewed by selecting "most recent" in the viewing dropdown.

Post a complaint about lack of captions on THIS video!

https://www.facebook.com/potus/videos/vb.424207551102424/425976254258887/

The Onion Makes People Laugh. However, Deaf People Can Only Cry.

Have you ever heard of "The Onion?" It is a parody/satirical news source, and very popular! Well, it is popular with hearing people, who can watch the videos on their website or their YouTube channel. Deaf people can't.

The Collaborative for Communication Access via Captioning (CCAC) wants to change that! Frustrated by having its requests for captions on The Onion's videos ignored, the CCAC has launched a campaign to get The Onion to closed caption finally! In an action alert, the CCAC wrote:

The Onion" has no captioning for videos, long overdue. We like to laugh also! and captions not only for deaf and hard of hearing. Captions are the world's language (for translations, search, more). Tweet them, FB them, email them to ask for Quality Captioning. Thanks if you do! TheOnion dot com has staff names and emails. On Twitter it's @TheOnion and @jmdavid [he is the digital manager for The Onion] among others. Questions? Email CCACaptioning@gmail.com anytime. Updates regularly for all in CCAC forum online also.

Think of The Onion as a reverse Buzzfeed, with short stories that put a humorous twist on actual things from the news.

The Onion's website uses a video player which clearly does not have the ability to display closed captions. This can be verified by looking at a video there and exploring the video player; there is no feature or option to display closed captions. For example, there is no CC button. They could have edited closed captioning on YouTube, but they are not captioning there.

However! A few years ago The Onion DID caption a few YouTube videos. It looks like they stopped captioning on July 30, 2012 which is the last captioned YouTube video uploaded by The Onion. The earliest one appears to have been from 2008, like the one below.

Live from Onion News Network...Fake News!

But The Onion stopped captioning in 2012, obviously not serious at all about being accessible!  So for the last three years, deaf and hard of hearing viewers and others who need closed captions, have been left out!

CCAC has been pounding on The Onion for weeks, and their efforts may be starting to bear fruit. CCAC announced that on October 21 they spoke to someone with The Onion! No further details were provided, and the battle continues.

Caption Action 2 has also previously asked The Onion for captions, as far back as 2013! And for the past few weeks, the CCAC (@CCACaptioning ) has been repeatedly tweeting The Onion. There's been no twitter response - not surprising because The Onion has over 8 million followers on Twitter! CCAC also reached out via email not once, not twice, but THREE times, and got zero response.

Why The Onion? When it comes to news and satire, The Onion is like a mirror image of the New York  Times! The "quality" of their "reporting" is such that often their fake stories have been mistaken for real news. AND they have been online since 2007, which means that there is almost a decade's worth of satirical videos online that are inaccessible to deaf and hard of hearing people.

CCAC can't do it alone. Can you help?

YouTube Going Red! You'll Get Red-Faced!

Caption Action 2 has just discovered that YouTube has announced a new paid subscription service called YouTube Red that starts October 28! Will captioning be required on this service? Unfortunately, there's no mention of this. There IS mention of PewDiePie, Lily Singh, and others, all of whom do not caption, and who have ignored all efforts by captioning advocates to get them to caption their videos.

YouTube Red will have some of the same content from free YouTube, but ad-free and downloadable. However, and this is why this is urgent, YouTube Red will ALSO have original, exclusive content just for YouTube Red! This includes content from YouTube creators who already are NOT captioning on free YouTube, like PewDiePie! This has us seeing red...

Services like YouTube Red that do not mandate closed captioning of all content, throw us back into the past before we got the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which mandated closed captioning on television! Back then, deaf people were paying full price for cable TV and not getting equal value because of no mandatory captioning on television. YouTube Red is just another form of cable!

So, tell YouTube in no uncertain terms (foul language encouraged if necessary) that you will not pay a single red cent for YouTube Red UNLESS they make captioning mandatory! YouTube is doing this to make money, so by refusing to subscribe to YouTube Red you will be sending a very loud, and very red-lined, message with your denied dollars!

Sample Articles About YouTube Red:

Tubefilter - http://www.tubefilter.com/2015/10/21/youtube-red-paid-subscription-service/
New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/technology/youtube-introduces-youtube-red-a-subscription-service.html
Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-red-ad-free-video-subscription-service-costs-999-per-month-2015-10

Are you feeling the redness, too?

Wanted: More Deaf Web Series!

Update: As of 7pm EST August 21, 2015, the entry for Don't Shoot the Messesnger hit 1000 views, the highest of any post on the Captioned Web TV blog!

Update 2: On August 24, 2015 we learned about the existence of another deaf web series, Troy's Big Break and immediately added it to Captioned Web TV.

Is it possible for us to have a deaf web series genre? We don't know. But we certainly feel it is time for one. We have deaf theatre, deaf film, deaf rap (Sean Forbes), even deaf television (Switched at Birth, anyone?). But no deaf web series genre.

To our knowledge, there has been no new deaf web series since 2012 when the Dine and Sign web series was on YouTube.  Dine and Sign posted episodes between September 2011 and August 2012. Then it stopped. That is normal for a web series.

There was a deaf role on the web series the Vamps Next Door. We have deaf vloggers like Rikki Poynter. There is a deaf booktuber. Katie LeClerc, who plays a deaf character on Switched at Birth, had a hearing role in the web series My Synthesized Life. But there has not been a real deaf web series since 2012.

Now, we have a chance for a deaf web series again. Don't Shoot the Messenger posted its pilot episode on August 15. However, according to their Indiegogo page, "The pilot episode was filmed in Brooklyn and Manhattan in late June on a shoe-string budget which mostly consisted of our life savings and favors from friends and family. We are raising this money so we can produce the rest of the episodes in this season (about 6 more episodes)." That means that if they can't raise enough funds, we may not get a full season of this new deaf web series.

Don't Shoot the Messenger

It is normal for independent web series to seek funding through crowdsourcing. It is how many if not most independent web series get made. A quality web series does cost some money to produce. Producing a web series involves multiple costs such as actors, supporting crew, equipment, and more. Web series producers routinely use sites such as Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and Seed&Spark to raise funds.

Why should you consider supporting this web series for a full season? We can think of six good reasons!

• There is clearly pent-up demand for something like this in the deaf and signing community. On the Captioned Web TV blog, the entry for Don't Shoot the Messenger has broken records for speed of getting to the top for all time views, AND it is also setting a record for total number of views to date. Almost 1,000 views as of this writing!
• It is a good quality series. It is obvious that they worked hard to produce a pilot with good quality.
• If we had a deaf web series genre it means more work for deaf people in the entertainment industry. The web series industry as a whole is already an important source of employment in the entertainment industry. 
• If we had a deaf web series genre it could mean more sponsorship opportunities for deaf-oriented businesses such as VRS companies. Several deaf-oriented businesses already sponsor events such as conferences.
• If we had a deaf web series genre it would give deaf filmmakers another way to make a name for themselves. Web series festivals are all over the world now. Imagine if a deaf web series were to win an award at one of them!
• Deaf web series would take their place along the many other web series genres - black web series, gay web series, literary web series, superhero web series....
• If this deaf web series were to be successful it would send a big message to the web series industry that there is an audience out there for this type of web series!

Do you agree it is time for a deaf web series genre? Then, if you can, help support the production of a full season (donations can be as small as $10). If you can't afford to donate, help by telling family and friends about this new deaf web series - which has only a pilot right now, and will make six episodes if they can raise enough funds to do it.

IndieGoGo "Don't Shoot the Messenger" fundraising project

Movie Web Series - New Trend?

Is this a new trend? Movie studios producing companion web series, without captions? The Paramount Pictures Terminator Genisys: The YouTube Chronicles web series is the first one we know of. What if more movie studios begin producing and releasing uncaptioned web series in advance of theater releases? Are you going to meekly accept being left out? Are you going to accept being totally disregarded as a movie viewer and a consumer??

For all we know, the Terminator Genisys web series could just be the first of many! What if the new Star Wars movie coming out in December 2015 has a companion web series without closed captions? How will you feel about that?

If you don't complain to Paramount now about the lack of closed captions on the Terminator Genisys web series, then there is little incentive for Disney to closed caption if they do produce a Star Wars web series!

Captioning Petitions, Petitions, Everywhere!

Out of sheer frustration at the difficulty of getting the attention of certain organizations or companies, more and more people are starting petitions with the aim of getting captioning access. This continuously revised blog post will list currently open captioning petitions on the Internet. Review petitions and decide which cause you want to support! This page will be permanently linked to on the right side of this blog.

Update: Some people say petitions are ineffective. Sometimes that is true, sometimes not. Petitions are a good tool for increasing awareness.

Some of these petitions were started by Caption Action 2. Others were started by other people or organizations.

Caption Action 2 Petitions:

Paramount Pictures, Closed Caption the Terminator Genisys Web Series Now!  (Petition started 6/23/2015)

Start Captioning Smosh! (Petition started December 2014)

Others' Petitions:

Add Captions to the Rooster Teeth Website (Petition started May/June 2015)

Make E3 Accessible with Closed Captioning on Twitch (Petition started June 19, 2015)

Provide Closed Caption Devices in Every AMC Movie Theater (Petition started July 2014)

Subtitle It! (Action on Hearing Loss - UK) (Actually an online form; start date unknown)

Supply Captioning for the Deaf (Petition to Celebration Cinema in Mount Pleasant, Michigan; petition started May 2015)

Tell CNN to Stop Closed Captioning in All Caps for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (Petition started June 2015)

YouTube Gaming Must Provide Closed Captioning (Petition started June 2015)

Terminate Paramount Pictures!

Update: A petition has been created demanding that Paramount Pictures closed caption this web series now! https://www.change.org/p/paramount-pictures-closed-caption-the-terminator-genisys-web-series-now

Update 2: Bleeding Cool wrote an article about this: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/06/23/petition-started-to-get-closed-captions-on-terminator-genisys-webseries/

On June 22, 2015 a new web series debuted on YouTube: Terminator Genisys: The YouTube Chronicles. Featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and YouTube stars, this web series lacks closed captioning. A total failure on the part of Paramount Pictures to consider that there may be deaf and hard of hearing fans (and other closed caption users) wanting to watch it! The web series was released in advance of the upcoming movie of the same name, Terminator Genisys, due out July 1, 2015 in theaters.

Why is this so important? It is important because it is an indication of the failure of both marketers and producers to remember the necessity of closed captioning! It is unacceptable for major movie studios to produce web series based on their movies, without any closed captioning!


If you want to try to watch the web series, go ahead, but you will have to put up with nonsensical, ridiculous autocraptioning crap like this:

Each part of the web series is being hosted on a different YouTube channel, none of which closed captions by the way. Part one is on the Machinima channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh0d3FZvcmM. Part two is on the Tobuscus channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mxRZqW7ipI. Part three is on IISuperwomanII's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsb-8fsQ04U.

What can you do? On Twitter, tweet @paramountpics. On Facebook, post comments on the Paramount Pictures Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Paramount) or better yet, on the Terminator Genisys facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TerminatorGenisys. On Tumblr, post a blog.  They must get the message that we will not tolerate being neglected like this! Don't let them get away with failing to closed caption this! What about deaf and hard of hearing Terminator fans?? Don't they exist??

Now Petitioning The White House!

What's that?? Petitioning the White House? Why? The deaf community and its supporters are petitioning the White House because the White House is guilty of engaging in a common practice that denies deaf and hard of hearing people equal access to videos. The common practice is posting videos first, and captioning later.

Sometimes it's days later. Other times it is several hours later. It does not matter what the length of the delay is. There should be ZERO delay. The White House should not be posting videos until they are captioned.

See the Problem

Below is a screenshot taken of the newest video posted to the White House YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse/videos) at the time this blog post was being written. Note the automatic captions displayed. You can tell they are automatic because they are surrounded by three parentheses, and when you click the CC button the words "English (auto-generated)" appear in the upper left corner. Plus, at the time this blog post was drafted, the first five videos listed had no captioning.

Some of the videos on the White House YouTube videos listing have the CC logo. Others don't have the CC logo but if you click on them, they are in fact captioned. It is not known why this is the case. It may or may not have something to do with the fact the White House is posting videos first, and captioning later.

Wrong Captioning Attitude 

Too many YouTube channels have the attitude of post first, caption later, which is NOT equal access. Change must come from the top. The top is the White House, which is supposed to champion equal access for people with disabilities.


Petitioning the White House... Petitioning the White House...

So, someone who was fed up with being left out of the initial viewing experience decided to create a petition on the White House petitions site. This petition calls for the White House to end this post first, caption later practice. The petition is at short URL http://wh.gov/iBvP9, or long URL https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/ensure-all-white-house-youtube-videos-are-captioned-moment-they-are-made-available-public.

If the petition achieves the target indicated in the picture, there is a good chance the White House will respond to the petition. This is explained on the Terms of Participation page (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/how-why/terms-participation), which states "To cross the second threshold and require a response, a petition must reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days."

Get the word out!

If you live in the United States, you can sign this petition. If you are outside the United States you can not sign but you can still help get the word out. Suggested hashtags to use on twitter: #WHCaptionsNow or #GovCaptions4All.

http://wh.gov/iBvP9

Note: After you sign you must verify signature by email. In some cases the email may appear in your "junk" mail folder.

Thank Tyler Oakley for Captioning by Donating to Trevor!

By our estimate, Tyler Oakley paid more than one thousand dollars out of his own pocket to cover the cost of captioning a video backlog going back seven years. AND he did that now-classic Hear Me Out video (inspired by Rikki Poynter). Now, the international deaf and hard of hearing community has a chance to thank Tyler for captioning and for advocating so strongly for it, by donating to his birthday cause (his birthday is March 22), the Trevor Project.

What is the Trevor Project? It is a nonprofit organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to gay and lesbian youth. You don't have to be a supporter of the gay community to donate. For us personally, our motivation was to say thank you for captioning!

For just $5 minimum (about the cost of a premium coffee, comic book, or a pair of pantyhose), you can say "thank you" to Tyler for captioning by donating at http://www.prizeo.com/tyler.  (To make a $5 donation, select "I'm In" then scroll down to "enter a custom amount" and enter $5.00). Prizeo takes both Paypal and credit cards. You can even leave a message (at the time of making a donation) for Tyler on the supporters' wall. Others have already left messages for Tyler thanking him for captioning, as shown below. Leaving such a message, even anonymously, is highly encouraged! You don't have to be a fan to donate!

 

Remember this video? It has had a huge impact on the YouTuber community! Over 1,678,000 views and still going since its initial posting on January 16, 2015! All those views mean that more and more hearing people - especially young people - are becoming aware of the need for captioning online. It has already inspired many small youtubers to begin closed captioning.  Thank Tyler by donating to the Trevor Project!

Want Smosh Captioned? Go After Defy Media!

It is impossible to get the attention of Smosh. Several people tweeted Smosh in response to Tyler Oakley's video, asking them to caption. But Smosh has over 2.5 million followers on Twitter, which means that a tweet to them never gets noticed. So how to get Smosh to notice your demand for captions?

Answer: Go after Defy Media! Defy Media is the company that owns Smosh and also Break.com, a site that also does not caption and recently started offering free movies online. Defy Media has only just over 1,000 followers on Twitter. which means a tweet to them is more likely to be noticed. Defy Media has a facebook page with fewer than 2,000 likes, again that means it is easier to be noticed.

So if you want captions on Smosh - and you should want captions on Smosh, because of Smosh's sheer size and huge potential influence on YouTube if they caption (19 million subscribers on main YouTube channel, a game channel, a cartoon channel, and a movie coming out soon), reach out to the following:

1. Defy Media Facebook - You can either post on the page, or send a private message.
2. Defy Media Twitter - @defymedia
3. Defy Media's President - @keithrichman
4. Defy Media's Marketing - @eliztesch
5. Defy Media's Search Engine Optimization Specialist - @hotelcafejunkie
6. Defy Media's Creative Team - @defycreatives

And, of course, don't forget the #CaptionSmosh petition!

Caption Action 2 Salutes Tyler Oakley!

It finally happened!!! A YouTube Superstar, Tyler Oakley, started closed captioning. Not only that, he went back and captioned his entire video catalog. All SEVEN YEARS' worth of videos are now captioned on Tyler Oakley's YouTube channel!

How big a star is Tyler Oakley and how much of an impact is this having? Huge!! Tyler has six million subscribers on YouTube and over three million followers on Twitter. Tyler also:

• Won the 2014 Teen Choice Award for male web star
• Was the 2014 Streamy Award Entertainer of the Year
• Appeared with Michelle Obama in a video posted four months ago

Last week, Tyler posted a viral video, "Dear YouTube: Hear Me Out,"  that is STILL going strong a week later! As of this writing, it has over 1.2 million views worldwide. Tyler cleverly started the video by talking silently, with no sound. What better way to get the message across? Many of his hearing fans freaked out, thinking that their headphones had broken.



Plus, the hashtag Tyler used, #HearMeOut, trended worldwide on Twitter last week. Suddenly, thousands of hearing people - YouTubers included - became aware that there was a segment of the population missing out! Thousands of people, mostly hearing, tweeted their favorite YouTubers asking them to caption. Furthermore, many people took Tyler up on his invitation to translate the captions into multiple languages. Tyler is still tweeting about captioning. Just today, he tweeted "I'd love to see my YouTube friends join in and caption."

As a result of Tyler's video, many smaller YouTubers have begun closed captioning or announced that they would begin captioning! Over at Captioned Web TV, we have been feeling like kids in a candy store, picking and choosing who to publish. (We can't publish every YouTuber who captions).

Tyler is not the first YouTuber to post a video about the need to caption. In the past couple of months, several YouTubers have tweeted about the need to caption YouTube. Many were inspired by YouTuber Rikki Poynter, in her video Deaf Accessibility on YouTube! (Rikki had earlier also done a video "YouTubers, You Need to Closed Caption Your Videos!")

However, Tyler is the biggest YouTuber to date to tweet and post a video, about the need to closed caption on YouTube. So he has given captioning advocates the biggest boost yet! That boost was sorely needed, given that watching online video has become even more popular with young people.

BUT.

Many of the top YouTube superstars have been remarkably silent even after Tyler's video was posted and he tweeted. One top YouTube star, Lily Singh, whose IISuperwomanII channel has over 4 million subscribers,  has indicated that she will look into captioning. Another top YouTuber, Hannah Hart, has tweeted in support of captioning, though she doesn't caption yet. However, there has been no reaction from top YouTube stars Pewdiepie, Smosh, or Epic Meal Time. One YouTube superstar is not enough to truly change things. We need more.

Also, we also still have the challenge of getting web series closed captioned. Web series are separate from YouTubers. As we explain it in the Facebook group Caption Action 2, there are two types of YouTube. Type I YouTube encompasses "traditional" YouTubers whose videos do not involve acting and telling stories. Most vloggers are Type I YouTube. Type II YouTube is the "storytelling" type and is closest to traditional television, because it involves real acting and real scripts. Both types of YouTube are important and deaf and hard of hearing people deserve access to both sides of YouTube.

Watch Tyler's #HearMeOut Video and Share It!

Fan Subtitling Flops!

Last year, YouTube introduced Fan Subtitling, a form of crowd-sourced captioning as a potential answer to the problem of lack of captions on top YouTube channels. Even YouTube was essentially admitting its automatic captions are crap. However, Fan Subtitling has turned out to be a big flop, as reported by Sara from Subtitle You Tube:

(Reprinted with permission from the Caption Action 2 facebook group)

While YouTube improved some features, allowing users to submit .SRT files, it also allows multiple users to post multiple captioned versions. There's no collaboration. You could submit captions, and unknowingly know that someone else already did some yesterday--submitted, but still waiting to be approved (which can feel like a waste of time to some captioners).

I spoke to Benny Fine (from the Finebrothers Channel) and he told me that there are many false starts (perhaps due to the clunky editor)--fans get bored, frustrated, don't follow through, and leave unfinished versions of captions. 

Even when you submit captions, there is no way to conveniently notify the content creator that captions have been submitted (for example, via email). Content creators have to sift through each video, manually checking to see if someone has created captions. This gets troublesome if someone wants to caption an old video because no content creator is going spend the time checking through several months of videos just to see if someone captioned it.

....Unless the channels are going to go the extra mile to create a pool of volunteers (a la Rhett and Link), fan subtitling isn't very reliable. Bigger channels that post a couple videos a week can afford the pocket change necessary to caption, while supporting those who make captions for a living.

Wow. This convinced us to remove Fan Subtitling as a viable option from the popular Info for Web TV Producers page at Captioned Web TV.  This means that for the top YouTube channels, we need to push for a professional or outsourced captioning solution, meaning that they would have to pay for it. They would have to build it into their video budgets. The smaller YouTube channels are doing the captioning themselves, or in rare cases, outsourcing it as cheaply as possible.

Vote: Does Buzzfeed Video Belong on Captioned Web TV?

Token captioning? Intermittent captioning? Rare captioning? Selective captioning? Occasional captioning? Minimal captioning? We don't know what to call it when a popular YouTube channel like Buzzfeed Video captions only a few videos, and they are far between. Caption Action 2 posted this series of tweets on Twitter and we would like for those of you not on social media to vote by posting a comment on this blog post. If you are on Twitter, send your vote to @captionaction2.  If you are on Facebook and a member of the Caption Action 2 group, you can post a comment on the posting there.

Update 1/4: So far there have been three votes, all on Facebook, and all three say NO to putting Buzzfeed Video on Captioned Web TV.

Tweets About Buzzfeed Video

1. A couple of days ago, I tweeted about a popular channel we refuse to add because of the size of the gap between CC videos. That channel is..
2. ...Buzzfeed Video. Can't even take a screenshot to communicate the gap, it is that big. Last one with CC: 12/18/2014! 0 since.
3. See for yourself here: https://www.youtube.com/user/BuzzFeedVideo/videos … (you will have to click "load more" to get down to the last CC one). this isn't fair.
4. When ppl check out a show listed on CWT, there should be at least a 50% chance the current videos will be CC. Ppl should not have to hunt.
5. Don't know if Buzzfeed Video is taking an "after" approach to CC instead of a "before" approach. Would have to check their videos daily.
6. But with the sheer size of the gap, it sure looks to us like an "after" approach, with selective captioning of videos.
7. Vote: Does Buzzfeed Video belong on Captioned Web TV, although with a huge warning note to expect to be disappointed?

#WithCaptions!

On December 29, a historic video was posted on YouTube: the #WithCaptions video! This video, produced by the Glide video texting app YouTube channel, brought together several deaf talents including Daniel Durant, "Matthew" on Switched at Birth, and the deaf rapper Sean Forbes.

One by one, the deaf people, led by hearing app creator Sarah Glide, talk about the need for captions on YouTube. Real captions, not the automatic captioning ("craptions").  The video uses the catchy hashtag, "#withcaptions." There is no mention of automatic captioning vs real captions - the message is kept simple for maximum impact - caption, period! Viewers are urged to tag the names of YouTube creators they want to see captioning, in the comments area. Already, many top YouTubers have been tagged in the comments, such as Jenna Marbles.

For those of us who are wondering what the fuss is over the craptions, there's a world of difference. If one watches carefully the automatic captioning (autocaps) and compares it to what's being said, they don't always make a lot of sense. Automatic captions must be edited to turn them into understandable captions.

Caption Action 2 is thrilled ("pah!") that this excellent video was created. This is the clearest sign (no pun intended!) that the deaf and hard of hearing community is FED UP with being left out of YouTube. After years of pushing for captions on YouTube and other places, Caption Action 2 is delighted that more people are getting involved - both deaf and hearing. Plus, the Caption Action 2 Facebook group is growing! New people are joining daily, and best of all, more young deaf and hard of hearing people are joining as they recognize the need to advocate for access on YouTube.

After its release, word of the #withcaptions video quickly spread through the deaf and hard of hearing community. This video now has over 11,000 views! It was even tweeted by Marlee Matlin, who, after Caption Action 2 tweeted her to ask for help in getting the word out, responded with a very emphatic YES!!. Work is continuing to get the word out to the people who really need to see it - the YouTube creators. As a result of the #withcaptions campaign, more small YouTubers have begun to caption, and selected ones are being published on the companion Captioned Web TV blogsite.

At the same time,  we will keep the earlier petition to Smosh open until Smosh captions! That petition is growing slowly but steadily, and more importantly, people are posting comments on it. The most recent comment was "My son is an avid Smosh fan, and I would like to be able to understand more of what he is watching."

Watch the #WithCaptions Video and Share It With Everyone You Know!