Articles on captioning, audio description, and the like
Due to popular demand, I present a bibliography of my published articles on captioning, audio description, and similar topics. Several are now available online – just follow the links. You’re on your own tracking down hardcopies of these articles.
- At A List Apart:
- “All the Access Money Can Buy” – BMWFilms.com and accessibility
- At A List Apart: Flash access:
Unclear on the concept – Macromedia is late to the party in
making Flash accessibility. Are they too late altogether, and will
hotshot young designer d00dz get the message anyway?
- “Typography and TV captioning"
Print, January/February 1989
- “Videos should be closed-captioned”
Billboard, August 5, 1989
- “Helping the deaf ‘hear’ television" (not my choice of title, I assure you)
Toronto Globe and Mail, August 25, 1989
- “Bill shows government not listening to needs of hearing impaired”
Playback, January 22, 1990
- “Our right to good quality captions”
Vibrations (Canadian Hearing Society newsletter), October 1989
- “Isn’t it time to demand quality captions?”
Disability Rag, March/April 1989
- “Captions for queers”
OutWeek, January 14, 1990 (on the need for captioning of gay film and TV)
- “Snow job”
Village Voice, June 15, 1993 (on crappy "subtitled" version of Snow’s "Informer" music video and superior, if still flawed, captioned version)
- “Between the lines”
Economist, May 7, 1994 (on the use of the U.S. Line 21 captioning system in U.K.)
- “Captive audience”
Vibe, October 1994 (on captioned music video – I disclaim all responsibility for the way this story turned out in the published version)
- “Reading the silver screen”
Technology Review, July 1994 (on captioning for motion pictures in theatres)
- “Follow the Bouncing Ball, ’90s-style”
Emigre 33, Winter 1995 (on captioned music videos – companion to “Slogans High and Low”)
- “Out of the Caption Closet” – an unpublished story for the Village Voice arguing that hearing people can too enjoy captioning, dammit!
- An unpublished story on the National Center for Accessible Media’s Motion Picture Access (MoPix) project written for the Toronto Globe and Mail (including discussion of a National Film Board technology for synchronizing audio with film) and a sidebar on audio description
- “Life goes on without the graphics”
Globe and Mail, November 14, 1995 (on the barriers graphics pose to many World Wide Web users)
Also, one conference paper:
- Typographic requirements for captioning for HDTV: An ancient presentation made at the Deaf Way conference way back in 1989 (!)