Closed Captions

Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form), sometimes including descriptions of non-speech elements. Other uses have included providing a textual alternative language translation of a presentation's primary audio language that is usually burned-in (or "open") to the video and unselectable.

HTML5 defines subtitles as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue when sound is available but not understood" by the viewer (for example, dialogue in a foreign language) and captions as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue, sound effects, relevant musical cues, and other relevant audio information when sound is unavailable or not clearly audible" (for example, when audio is muted or the viewer is deaf or hard of hearing).

Terminology

The term ''closed'' indicates that the captions are not visible until activated by the viewer, usually via the remote control or menu option. On the other hand, the terms ''open'', ''burned-in'', ''baked on'', ''hard-coded'', or simply ''hard'' indicate that the captions are visible to all viewers as they are embedded in the video.

In the United States and Canada, the terms '' subtitles'' and ''captions'' have different meanings. ''Subtitles'' assume the viewer can hear but cannot understand the language or accent, or the speech is not entirely clear, so they transcribe only dialogue and some on-screen text. ''Captions'' aim to describe to the deaf and hard of hearing all significant audio content—spoken dialogue and non-speech information such as the identity of speakers and, occasionally, their manner of speaking—along with any significant music or sound effects using words or symbols. Also, the term ''closed caption'' has come to be used to also refer to the North American EIA-608 encoding that is used with NTSC-compatible video.

The United Kingdom, Ireland, and most other countries do not distinguish between subtitles and closed captions and use ''subtitles'' as the general term. The equivalent of ''captioning'' is usually referred to as ''subtitles for the hard of hearing''. Their presence is referenced on screen by notation which says "Subtitles", or previously "Subtitles 888" or just "888" (the latter two are in reference to the conventional videotext channel for captions), which is why the term ''subtitle'' is also used to refer to the Ceefax-based videotext encoding that is used with PAL-compatible video. The term ''subtitle'' has been replaced with ''caption'' in a number of markets—such as Australia and New Zealand—that purchase large amounts of imported US material, with much of that video having had the US CC logo already superimposed over the start of it. In New Zealand, broadcasters superimpose an ear logo with a line through it that represents subtitles for the hard of hearing, even though they are currently referred to as captions. In the UK, modern digital television services have subtitles for the majority of programs, so it is no longer necessary to highlight which have subtitling/captioning and which do not.

Remote control handsets for TVs, DVDs, and similar devices in most European markets often use "SUB" or "SUBTITLE" on the button used to control the display of subtitles/captions.

History

Open captioning

Regular open-captioned broadcasts began on PBS's '' The French Chef'' in 1972. WGBH began open captioning of the programs ''Zoom'', ''ABC World News Tonight'', and '' Once Upon a Classic'' shortly thereafter.

Technical development of closed captioning

Closed captioning was first demonstrated in the United States at the First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1971. A second demonstration of closed captioning was held at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University) on February 15, 1972, where ABC and the National Bureau of Standards demonstrated closed captions embedded within a normal broadcast of ''The Mod Squad''.
At the same time in the UK the BBC was demonstrating its Ceefax text based broadcast service which they were already using as a foundation to the development of a closed caption production system. They were working with Professor Alan Newell from the University of Southampton who had been developing prototypes in the late 1960s.

The closed captioning system was successfully encoded and broadcast in 1973 with the cooperation of PBS station WETA. As a result of these tests, the FCC in 1976 set aside line 21 for the transmission of closed captions. PBS engineers then developed the caption editing consoles that would be used to caption prerecorded programs.

The BBC in the UK was the first broadcaster to include closed captions (called subtitles in the UK) in 1979 based on the Teletext framework for pre-recorded programming.

Real-time captioning, a process for captioning live broadcasts, was developed by the National Captioning Institute in 1982. In real-time captioning, stenotype operators who are able to type at speeds of over 225 words per minute provide captions for live television programs, allowing the viewer to see the captions within two to three seconds of the words being spoken.

Major US producers of captions are WGBH-TV, VITAC, CaptionMax and the National Captioning Institute. In the UK and Australasia, Ai-Media, Red Bee Media, itfc, and Independent Media Support are the major vendors.

Improvements in speech recognition technology means that live captioning may be fully or partially automated. BBC Sport broadcasts use a "respeaker": a trained human who repeats the running commentary (with careful enunciation and some simplification and markup) for input to the automated text generation system. This is generally reliable, though errors are not unknown.

Full-scale closed captioning

The National Captioning Institute was created in 1979 in order to get the cooperation of the commercial television networks.

The first use of regularly scheduled closed captioning on American television occurred on March 16, 1980. Sears had developed and sold the Telecaption adapter, a decoding unit that could be connected to a standard television set. The first programs seen with captioning were a ''Disney's Wonderful World'' presentation of the film ''Son of Flubber'' on NBC, an ''ABC Sunday Night Movie'' airing of '' Semi-Tough'', and ''Masterpiece Theatre'' on PBS.

Since 2010 BBC provides a 100% broadcast captioning service across all 7 of its main broadcast channels BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, Cbeebies and BBC News (TV channel).

BBC iPlayer launched in 2008 as the first captioned Video on demand service from a major broadcaster meeting comparable levels of captioning as those provided on its broadcast channels.

Legislative development in the U.S.

Until the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, television captioning was performed by a set-top box manufactured by Sanyo Electric and marketed by the National Captioning Institute (NCI). (At that time a set-top decoder cost about as much as a TV set itself, approximately $200.) Through discussions with the manufacturer it was established that the appropriate circuitry integrated into the television set would be less expensive than the stand-alone box, and Ronald May, then a Sanyo employee, provided the expert witness testimony on behalf of Sanyo and Gallaudet University in support of the passage of the bill. On January 23, 1991, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 was passed by Congress. This Act gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) power to enact rules on the implementation of closed captioning. This Act required all analog television receivers with screens of at least 13 inches or greater, either sold or manufactured, to have the ability to display closed captioning by July 1, 1993.

Also, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed to ensure equal opportunity for persons with disabilities. The ADA prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in public accommodations or commercial facilities. Title III of the ADA requires that public facilities—such as hospitals, bars, shopping centers and museums (but not movie theaters)—provide access to verbal information on televisions, films or slide shows.

The Federal Communications Commission requires all providers of programs to caption material which has audio in English or Spanish, with certain exceptions specified in Section 79.1(d) of the commission's rules. These exceptions apply to new networks; programs in languages other than English or Spanish; networks having to spend over 2% of income on captioning; networks having less than US$3,000,000 in revenue; and certain local programs; among other exceptions. Those who are not covered by the exceptions may apply for a hardship waiver.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded on the Decoder Circuitry Act to place the same requirements on digital television receivers by July 1, 2002. All TV programming distributors in the U.S. are required to provide closed captions for Spanish-language video programming as of January 1, 2010.

A bill, H.R. 3101, the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, was passed by the United States House of Representatives in July 2010. A similar bill, S. 3304, with the same name, was passed by the United States Senate on August 5, 2010, by the House of Representatives on September 28, 2010, and was signed by President Barack Obama on October 8, 2010. The Act requires, in part, for ATSC-decoding set-top box remotes to have a button to turn on or off the closed captioning in the output signal. It also requires broadcasters to provide captioning for television programs redistributed on the Internet.

On February 20, 2014, the FCC unanimously approved the implementation of quality standards for closed captioning, addressing accuracy, timing, completeness, and placement. This is the first time the FCC has addressed quality issues in captions.

In 2015, a law was passed in Hawaii requiring two screenings a week of each movie with captions on the screen. In 2022 a law took effect in New York City requiring movie theaters to offer captions on the screen for up to four showtimes per movie each week, including weekends and Friday nights.

Some state and local governments (including Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; Rochester, New York; and Washington state) require closed captioning to be activated on TVs in public places at all times, even if no one has requested it.

Philippines

As amended by RA 10905, all TV networks in the Philippines are required to give CC. As of 2018, the three major TV networks in the country are currently testing the closed captioning system on their transmissions. ABS-CBN added CC in their daily 3 O'Clock Habit in the afternoon. 5 started implementing CCs on their live noon and nightly news programs. GMA was once started broadcasting nightly and late night news programs, but then they stopped adding CCs lately. Only select Korean drama and local or foreign movies, ''Biyahe ni Drew'' (English: ''Drew's Explorations'') and ''Idol sa Kusina'' (English: ''Kitchen Idol'') are the programs and shows that they air with proper closed captioning.

Closed captioning in some Filipino films either to be "included" if film production companies have a bias on having impact on their viewing experience for those who did not understand the language. Since 2016, all Filipino-Language Films and also on some Streaming Services like iWant had included their English Subtitles in some showing on films. The law regarding that was passed by Gerald Anthony Gullas Jr., a lawmaker from Cebu City, who had implemented the regulations on standardizing both official languages of the Philippines, as the people had not fluently mastered their English vocabulary.

Legislative development in Australia

The government of Australia provided seed funding in 1981 for the establishment of the Australian Caption Centre (ACC) and the purchase of equipment. Captioning by the ACC commenced in 1982 and a further grant from the Australian government enabled the ACC to achieve and maintain financial self-sufficiency. The ACC, now known as Media Access Australia, sold its commercial captioning division to Red Bee Media in December 2005. Red Bee Media continues to provide captioning services in Australia today.

Funding development in New Zealand

In 1981, TVNZ held a telethon to raise funds for Teletext-encoding equipment used for the creation and editing of text-based broadcast services for the deaf. The service came into use in 1984 with caption creation and importing paid for as part of the public broadcasting fee until the creation of the NZ on Air taxpayer fund, which is used to provide captioning for NZ On Air content, TVNZ news shows and conversion of EIA-608 US captions to the preferred EBU STL format for only TVNZ 1, TV 2 and TV 3 with archived captions available to FOUR and select Sky programming. During the second half of 2012, TV3 and FOUR began providing non-Teletext DVB image-based captions on their HD service and used the same format on the satellite service, which has since caused major timing issues in relation to server load and the loss of captions from most SD DVB-S receivers, such as the ones Sky Television provides their customers. As of April 2, 2013, only the Teletext page 801 caption service will remain in use with the informational Teletext non-caption content being discontinued.

Application

Closed captions were created for deaf and hard of hearing individuals to assist in comprehension. They can also be used as a tool by those learning to read, learning to speak a non-native language, or in an environment where the audio is difficult to hear or is intentionally muted. Captions can also be used by viewers who simply wish to read a transcript along with the program audio.

In the United States, the National Captioning Institute noted that English as a foreign or second language (ESL) learners were the largest group buying decoders in the late 1980s and early 1990s before built-in decoders became a standard feature of US television sets. This suggested that the largest audience of closed captioning was people whose native language was not English. In the United Kingdom, of 7.5 million people using TV subtitles (closed captioning), 6 million have no hearing impairment.

Closed captions are also used in public environments, such as bars and restaurants, where patrons may not be able to hear over the background noise, or whe