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The National Captioning Institute, Inc. (NCI) is an American
501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...
nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
that provides real-time and off-line
closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed cap ...
, subtitling and translation, described video, web captioning, and Spanish captioning for
television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
and
film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
s. Created in 1979 and headquartered in
Chantilly, Virginia Chantilly is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The population was 24,301 as of the 2020 census. Chantilly is named after an early-19th-century mansion and farm, which in turn took the name of an ...
, the organization was the first to caption live TV and home video, and holds the
trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
on the display icon featuring a simple geometric rendering of a
cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a ...
television set merged with a
speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a charac ...
to indicate that a program is captioned by National Captioning Institute. National Captioning Institute also has an office in
Santa Clarita, California Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most popul ...
.


History

The
National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a Industry trade group, trade association and lobbying, lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasting, broadcasters in th ...
formed a task force in 1972 to create the technology to provide captions of television broadcasts without an unreasonably large financial burden on television networks or local television stations.Brennan, Patricia (September 29, 1985). "National Captioning Institute: CC: Decoding Television for the Hearing Impaired". ''The Washington Post''. p. TV8. Federal funding paid for the technology. Viewers would buy an adapter for their televisions that would decode and display the text while watching closed-captioned television programs. Up to that point, captioning of television shows was rare, with
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
television station WGBH being one of the few with open captioning of news and public affairs shows since the early 1970s. The National Captioning Institute was incorporated on January 30, 1979, with millions of dollars of start-up funding from the federal government.National Captioning Institute, Inc.
''District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs''.
Government of the District of Columbia The District of Columbia, commonly known as Washington, D.C., has a mayor–council government that operates under Article One of the United States Constitution and the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. The Home Rule Act devolves certain pow ...
. Retrieved September 10, 2018.
Stevens, Mary (May 5, 1989). "Captioning gives deaf whole story". ''Chicago Tribune''. p. 67. On March 23, 1979, the
United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the US federal government created to protect the health of the US people and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
announced plans for closed-captioning of twenty hours per week of television shows."Plans for Prime-Time TV Captions". ''The Washington Post''. March 24, 1979. p. B4. The National Captioning Institute established its original headquarters in Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia, and later that year it established a second office in
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
. The National Captioning Institute's work first became publicly well known on March 16, 1980, when ABC,
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
, and
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
collectively introduced closed-captioning of their television shows. At the time, CBS decided not the join the group at first because CBS preferred a different captioning system that was being used in Europe. John E.D. Ball was the founding president of the National Captioning Institute."John E.D. Ball" (obituary). ''The Washington Post''. April 13, 2010. p. B6.
Marc Okrand Marc Okrand (; born July 3, 1948) is an American linguist. His professional work is in Native American languages, and he is well known as the creator of the Klingon language in the ''Star Trek'' science fiction franchise. Career As a linguist, ...
was the National Captioning Institute's first supervisor of captioning, overseeing the transcription of audio.Nishi, Dennis (May 14, 2009). "How I Got Here: Helping the Hearing Impaired And Voicing the Klingons". ''Wall Street Journal''. p. D4. At the time, employees of the National Captioning Institute used court-reporter steno machines to caption shows.
Rosalynn Carter Eleanor Rosalynn Carter ( ; ; August 18, 1927 – November 19, 2023) was an American activist and humanitarian who served as the first lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981, as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. Throughout her decades of ...
hosted a reception at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
honoring the work of the National Captioning Institute on March 19, 1980. In 1981, Hollywood Radio and Television Society gave an award to the National Captioning Institute for developing the closed captioning system for television shows. In 1981,
RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...
/ Columbia Pictures Home Video became the first video company to release movies on
videotape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually Sound recording and reproduction, sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog signal, analog or Digital signal (signal processing), digital signal. V ...
that had closed captions. In 1982, the NCI developed real-time captioning, a process for captioning newscasts, sports events, and other live broadcasts as the events are being televised, thereby bringing thousands of households into national conversations in a way that had previously been impossible. Also in 1982, the NCI provided the first real-time captioning for a live event, the Academy Awards. A court reporter trained as a captioner provided the captions using a Stenotype machine, which uses phonetic codes and allows the captioner to take down the spoken word at speeds of up to 250 words per minute. The ad-libs and the awarding of the Oscars were live captioned by the steno captioner, while a production coordinator displays the prepared captions of the scripted portions of the broadcast. Later that year, ABC's " World News Tonight" was the first regularly-scheduled program to be real-time captioned. In 1989, the NCI partnered with ITT to develop the first caption-decoding microchip to be built directly into new television sets in the factory. It led to the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act in 1990, mandating that all new television sets 13 inches or larger manufactured for sale in the U.S. contain caption-decoding technology. In 1993, a federal law went into effect that required built-in capacity to display captions on all televisions 13 inches or larger, which would make purchasing separate decoders no longer necessary.Yant, Monica (June 29, 1993). "Captioning Gets a Regular Role on TV Television: Federal law takes effect Thursday requiring sets 13 inches or larger to have built-in subtitle capability". ''Los Angeles Times''. p. 2. Virtually all television shows were being broadcast with closed-captions at that point. In 2006, the National Captioning Institute terminated the employment of 14 employees who had joined the National Association of Employees and Transmission Technicians in an effort to have reasonable workloads, receive annual cost-of-living raises, and prevent cuts in employee benefit plans.Macías, Jorge Luis (April 1, 2006). "Protestan ex empleados de NCI" (Spanish). ''La Opinión'' (Los Angeles, California). p. 3A. In 2015–2016, National Captioning Institute employees attempted to organize with the Communication Workers of America (CWA), again in an effort to have reasonable workloads, receive annual cost-of-living raises, and prevent cuts in employee benefit plans." e National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians–Communication Workers of America, AFL–CIO (the Union) attempted to unionize NCI's TX and CA offices. ..On June 26, OOToschi sent this email to NCI management about the Union:" NCI responded with actions that according to the judge violated labor laws, "which included firing two workers, interrogating employees, searching employees' chat logs for union discussions, sending anti-union emails to employees, maintaining an unlawful social media policy, and maintaining an unacceptable behavior policy." "An NLRB administrative law judge in Fort Worth, Tex., found that the National Captioning Institute violated federal law when it fired two workers for their union activity, and committed other labor law violations. .. udge Robert Ringlerordered NCI to cease and desist all unlawful practices, rescind illegal and overbroad policies, and offer the two fired workers reinstatement with full back pay, plus interest. NCI also was ordered to notify employees of the NLRB order by email and Intranet."


See also

*
Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American Far-right politics, far-right radio host, radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas. ''The Alex Jones Show'' is the lo ...
– Actor and founder of a company offering real-time, word accurate speech-to-text captioning program using broadband technology *
Linda Bove Linda Bove is a Deaf American actress, her most notable role being a fictionalized version of herself in the PBS children's series ''Sesame Street'' from 1971 to 2002. Bove was the first Deaf actress to be a member of the program's recurring c ...
– Deaf actress on
Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational television, educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Worksh ...
who advocated for television sets to be required to display closed captions *
Julia Child Julia Carolyn Child (Birth name#Maiden and married names, née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for having brought French cuisine to the American pu ...
– Her cooking show The French Chef became the first television program to be captioned for the deaf in 1972 (using the preliminary technology of open-captioning) * Phyllis Frelich – Deaf actress who won a
Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ce ...
for Children of a Lesser God *
Americans with Disabilities Act The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or ADA () is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ...
(ADA) (1990) ** Auxiliary aid * Telecommunications Act (1996)


External links

*
How Deaf Advocates Won the Battle for Closed Captioning and Changed the Way Americans Watch TV
Olivia B. Waxman (16 March 2020), ''TIME'', describing the role of the NCI in advocating for closed captioning
Captions For Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Viewers
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
W3C timed text homepage


References

{{Reflist Deafness organizations in the United States Television organizations in the United States Transcription (linguistics) Non-profit organizations based in Chantilly, Virginia Organizations established in 1979