By Jake Drown

5 Issues with Closed Captioning Your Own Videos

Close captioning is a great way to make videos more accessible to viewers who are hard of hearing or deaf. Unfortunately, it can often be tricky to implement with your own videos, and there are plenty of issues that you may encounter. This article will discuss 5 of the most common issues associated with close captioning your own videos, so you can be better prepared for the task.

Issue 1: Finding the Time to Do It
Close captioning is a very time-consuming process and it is often difficult to find time to do it in your own schedule. Not only does it take time to actually add the captions, but you also have to watch the video while creating the captions, which can take significantly longer than the actual captioning. It’s a good idea to break the video down into smaller parts, so you can work on it in more manageable chunks, but it still takes a lot of time to get the job done.

By Ben Kalb

Reaching Your Target Audience – Why Closed Captioning is Important

The accuracy of closed captioning is important. It affects nearly 40 million Americans who are hard of hearing or functionally deaf.

Next time you’re at the gym watching the TV scroll closed captioning, notice how many times “there” should be “their.” What about homophones like carat, caret and carrot? We’ve all seen the viral videos of closed captioning gone wrong, but if you’re deaf or hard of hearing, it’s not very amusing at all.

By Derek Nicol

The First Deaf Hero in Closed Captioning History

If closed captioning could salute its pioneer, Emerson Romero would be the man. He was a Charlie Chaplain impersonator, an actor for silent movies, and the first to champion accessible media. The best part—he was deaf.

By Ben Kalb

Ask Your Tax Man: How to Claim a Tax Credit for Closed Captioning

It’s been said that “only two things are certain in life — death and taxes”. Although this is a funny little saying, it also seems very true, doesn’t it? Well, here’s a little tip that may save your small business some money. If you have closed captioned programming, you may be eligible to receive a tax credit for providing accessibility to persons with disabilities. It’s called the Disabled Access Credit and is reported on IRS form 8826.

By Ben Kalb

Who Is Required To Close-Caption?

With only a few exceptions, all programming for broadcast in the United States must be closed captioned. The rules for the requirement of closed captions were directed by the U.S. Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and became effective starting in 1998. Since then, the required amount of captioning has been steadily increasing. Today, nearly 100% of all English and Spanish language programming is closed captioned.


(813) 560-0000