CBC captioning errors and omissions

CBC is Canada’s national public broadcaster. A human-rights case settled in 2002, Vlug v. CBC, required CBC Television (the main network) and Newsworld (an all-news channel) to caption 100% of their programming save for “glitches.” That included not only shows, but intros, extros, bumpers, and promos for upcoming shows.

And they aren’t doing it.

Questions & answers: A quick slideshow about CBC captioning and the lessons it teaches us about getting to 100% captioning everywhere. (Use any obvious arrow key to navigate, and yes, it prints fine)
News: What’s new on these pages. See also: blog postings
Ongoing error list: I’m still keeping track of errors. You can subscribe via RSS
Background: All the documentation, including responses from CBC and my replies to those
CBC captioning manuals: What do the CBC captioning manuals say? See for yourself.
Some old work I did for CBC: I have carried out a couple of consulting contracts for CBC. One of them concerned the reuse of TV captions in online video. We had a whole project up and running for two years, but it was later cancelled without notice (and I don’t even know who cancelled it). This was another leadership position that CBC totally blew. (I don’t have any consulting contracts or other business with CBC at present.)
Submission to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage: In 2007, I made a submission to that Committee as part of its study of the CBC’s mandate. My written submission and a transcript of my remarks at a hearing are both available

Do you work for the CBC?

If you work for the CBC but don’t work in captioning there, you may well have the impression that CBC is a leader in captioning. Sure, in one way – it lost a human-rights case and was forced to caption every second of the broadcast day on two channels. But it isn’t actually doing that. This is one of those cases where CBC is falling down on the job.

And if you work at CBC in captioning, you’re the one falling down on the job.

Updated: 2008.04.11