Adding subtitles to YouTube videos just got easier: Amara now allows YouTube users to crowdsource captioning of their videos, which could help YouTube producers to grow their audience. Read more »
Netflix currently has closed captions for 82 percent of all the videos it is streaming. By October 2014, this number will go up to 100 percent, according to a consent decree the company entered to settle a lawsuit with disability rights advocates. Read more »
Found a broadcast program on YouTube that doesn’t come with closed captions? Then you can now use a special complaints form to tell on the publisher, who should have supplied subtitles according to new regulations that came into effect earlier this month. Read more »
Deaf and hard-of-hearing web video viewers have long pressed for a faster adoption of closed captioning, and it looks like the FCC got their back: Content also shown on TV will have to have closed captions when streamed online starting next month, the commission recently ruled. Read more »
YouTube users fluent in Japanese can now watch videos in that language with automatically generated captions, thanks to the same speech-recognition technology that also powers voice input on Android mobile devices. This is the first step towards an international expansion for auto-captioning YouTube videos. Read more »
Deaf and hard of hearing users may soon get more use out of Google’s much-hyped new group video chat service Hangouts, thanks to a field test that looks at ways to add support for American Sign Language. Initial feedback from hearing-impaired users is enthusiastic. Read more »
Salman Khan’s popular educational videos can now be watched with subtitles in up to two dozen different languages, thanks to a cooperation between the Khan Academy and Universal Subtitles. Adding captions not only widens Khan’s audience, it could also help to avoid future legal challenges. Read more »
Disabilities rights advocates sued CNN this week in an attempt to force the network to caption all of its online videos. The lawsuit brings closed captions back into the spotlight and could, if successful, have implications on pretty much any site offering online video in California. Read more »
Big broadcasters will soon have to provide closed captions for any of their TV shows online. A bill mandating such captioning was passed by the House yestrday after receiving unanimous support by the Senate. It’s now on President Obama’s desk, awaiting his almost certain signature. Read more »
A new project dubbed Universal Subtitles aims to launch a Wikipedia for subtitles and tools that make it easy for volunteers to add closed captions to any video they find online. Universal Subtitles is a new project by the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), better known as […] Read more »
