News release about CBC News Online captioning project

After we got the CBC News Online project of reusing TV captions on the Web up and running, CBC was meant to send out a press release. But because of the content-management system in use at the time, we could not guarantee that a “CC” symbol or other onscreen control would appear on the news homepage. On each item’s individual homepage it appeared, but not on the news homepage; you could not tell at a glance which items had captioning.

For that rather minor reason, CBC never sent out a press release. Here is an early version of what would otherwise have been sent out.

A world first – Canadian Broadcasting Corporation adds captioning to online CBC News

Closed captioning (CC) is now available at www.cbc.ca/news/. This award-winning site is the first broadcaster in the world to regularly add captioning to online videoclips for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to online videoclips, usually offering several news items each weekday.

“One of the goals of cbc.ca/news is to make our news available to as many people as possible,” said Ken Wolff, the executive producer of cbc.ca/news. “Closed captioning helps us do a better job of serving all Canadians not only deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, but also anyone who works in a noisy environment.”

Though the Internet is not regulated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and there are no requirements to provide captioning online, CBC News has added captions to video-streamed news clips in keeping with its public-broadcasting mandate.

Closed-captioning has been available on CBC Television and CBC Newsworld broadcasts for nearly two decades, while online video has remained inaccessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and others who rely on captioning. One reason why other broadcasters haven’t provided this service yet is because of technical incompatibilities. CBC News solves this the problem by decoding TV closed captions so that they are always visible in an online news clip. A visitor can watch selected news items with or without captioning.

“It's a cheap, easy way around a technical problem that has kept Web video inaccessible to people who use captioning,” said Joe Clark, a Toronto accessibility consultant who worked with CBC News staff on the project. “Any of the for-profit broadcasters could provide captioning this way, but nobody has stepped up to the plate. CBC is doing it first.”

Only news items showing the “CC” acronym symbol have captioning. Look for it on the upper right-hand side of the a news item’s page in the “Choose Your Media” box and. Click on the logo to play the captioned clip.

[Publicist names redacted]

– February 19, 2002