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ARTICLE 6: Implementing Captioning on your government
access channel
by
Darren Doerschel,
Technical Operations Supervisor, CityTV, City of Santa Monica, CA
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Sooner or later, most government access channels
are asked to look into the feasibility of providing programming with captioning
in order to make programming accessible to persons with a hearing impairment.
This article will cover the basics of captioning along with providing you with
some of the practical experiences of those who have implemented captioning for
their programs.
Background
Closed captioning is an assistive technology that
provides access to television for persons with a hearing impairment. It is
similar to subtitles and provides the text of the audio portion of the program
as printed words on the television screen. Viewers see closed captioning by
using a set-top decoder box or a television with built-in decoder circuitry.
In 1997 the Federal Communications Commission
approved a new law that mandated captioning on virtually all television
programming in the United States. This law, however, does not appear to apply to
local government cable access programming since video program providers who have
revenues of less than $3,000,000 per year are exempt. The Americans with
Disabilities Act does not have a clear requirement for local government
programming to be captioned. Many government access channels have chosen not to
implement closed captioning for this reason and also due to the costs of
providing captioning. Captioning can be provided live or off-line. Live
captioning of a City Council meeting would happen as close to real time as is
possible. Off-line captioning would require that a videotape and a transcript of
the meeting, if available, be sent to a captioning provider. The captions would
then be encoded onto the videotape and then returned for airing.
Often times, captioning is implemented without
looking at any data to justify providing the service. This data could prove
useful in the future to justify cutting it back, if necessary. Discontinuing
this type of service, although it may be legal, can become an awkward situation.
In most cases the captioning service is more expensive than doing the video
coverage itself, so in tough budget times, it may appear easy to the government
programmer to discontinue the captioning service. The politics, however, and
the goodwill of the community may dictate that other cost cutting measures be
considered.
Captioning Live Programming
Live or what is called real-time captioning is
recommended for the captioning of City Council or other live public meeting
coverage. The most efficient method of providing real-time captioning is to use
a real-time captioning service. The live Council meeting coverage is sent via
phone line to a captioner who is at an off-site location with captioning
equipment. Depending on the company used, up to three dedicated phone lines are
required. One has the audio feed of the meeting. The second one may have a
videophone installed on it so that the captions can be verified. The third line
is for a modem to the captioning encoder in the control room of the video
coverage.
The equipment required for the captioning is an
encoder that will embed the captions onto the video signal. The encoder will
also need to have a modem to receive the captions via telephone line. The
estimated cost for the encoder and modem is $2500 to $3500. For single time
usage, an encoder can sometimes be rented on an hourly basis from the captioning
service. The hourly rental cost for an encoder is estimated to be $20 per hour.
If you have a server based playback system and want to be able to play back
captioned video, you may incur up to an additional $10,000 in costs to be able
to support the encoded video. In Hillsborough County, Florida, they chose to
implement closed captioning by hiring two full-time real-time captioners to do
the captioning for all live coverage of county meetings. Contract captioners
cover staff vacations and other leave. After doing their research they felt
that this was the most cost-efficient and reliable method given their needs and
requirements.
In Pinellas County, Florida, they purchased all of
the necessary equipment including Cheetah software and chairs with floating
arms, etc. to caption from their studios. They then contracted with a company to
provide the captioners to do the captioning. Much of the captioning is currently
done as a remote and the regular captioners “know” the voices of the
Commissioners and don’t have any difficulty with attribution from a remote
location.
The hourly cost for the captioning service can
range from $150 to $275 per hour and up, usually with some kind of minimum, like
two hours. Some captioning services can also provide the transcript of the
meeting as a word processing document so that the transcripts can be used in
preparation of the minutes of the meeting or can be posted on the Internet. The
average fee for this service is approximately $20 per hour of footage.
Another factor that can affect the costs for
captioning are phone line charges and who pays for them. Real-time captioners
often work off-site and can be located anywhere around the country. Government
access channels that are currently providing real-time captioning of their City
Council meeting coverage include Berkeley, CA; Denver, CO; Las Vegas, NV; Los
Angeles, CA; Madison, WI; Montgomery County, MD; Pinellas County, FL; San Diego,
CA; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; and Santa Monica, CA.
Special Considerations for doing Public Meeting Captioning
Government access channels provide some unique
challenges to real-time captioning services.
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We often have long meetings with no scheduled end time! This can make it
difficult for a captioning service to determine how much staff is needed to
cover a meeting that may be long or might be short. Although they are used to
covering live sporting events with varied times, even the sporting events
usually fall within an average range of length of time. In Santa Monica, CA,
we have had captioning companies decide not to respond to our request for bids
due to this uncertainty.
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Sometimes we have last minute meetings and it can be difficult to find a
captioner on short notice! This is one of the reasons that it is recommended
that a government access channel have contracts with several captioning
services to call upon when there is a special need or short notice.
Being the cheapest doesn’t mean it’s the best!
In Santa Monica, CA, we have found that the
quality of the captioning can vary greatly and that price is not the biggest
factor in determining who does the best captioning. There is a huge difference
in the quality of captioning. The high quality services spell your Mayor’s name
correctly because they have pre-entered all of the names of the key speakers.
The captions have good spelling and grammar. When the captions are read without
the benefit of hearing what is spoken, the captions make sense. Lower quality
captioning misspells names (this has actually happened to us and is quite
embarrassing!), has multiple errors, and doesn’t make a lot of sense when you
read them. At the present, the FCC rules do not require that captions meet any
particular quality or accuracy standards.
Finding the best captioning service to meet your needs
If you decide to go out with a Request for
Proposals (RFP) to find a captioning service, there are some items you can put
into your RFP to help ensure that you get a quality service.
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Certification of captioners. There are several standards. For example, the
CSR, Certified Shorthand Reporter requires 225 words-per-minute (wpm) and the
passing of a written exam on Court reporting.
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Require a certain level of accuracy, like 98% accuracy.
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Require trouble shooting/error reports
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Stipulate desired standards in the areas of accuracy rates, speed, breaks in
service issues, etc.
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Specify on-site or remote services
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Request quoted rates on emergency or overtime service
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Request half-hour rates after minimum is met
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Require technical emergency response
It can also be helpful to do several trials with
different captioning companies to evaluate the quality of their captions and
their service prior to going out to bid for a regular captioning service. In
Santa Monica, CA, we have chosen to continuously work with several captioning
companies on a regular basis rather than go out on an RFP. This provides us with
more flexibility, more resources for last minute needs and the option to work
with a different company if there are staffing or quality issues.
Also, we have found in working with captioning
companies that it is good to establish a method to confirm when a captioning
company is going to be providing services. You can potentially be liable for
cancellation fees for meetings that you didn’t know you had scheduled with them!
Other uses for captions
Once you have started captioning your meetings, it
is simple to get the captioning company to provide a file of the captions. This
can be used to generate minutes or transcripts of the meeting. Some cities may
already be hiring a company to do text transcripts of their meetings. The
funding for the text transcripts could be applied towards the captioning to help
lower the funding required to implement captioning. Hillsborough County,
Florida provides the captioning transcripts of their meetings on-line, usually
within hours of the closing gavel. Just go to HTV22.org and click on
“captioning”.
Also, if you are streaming your channel or meeting
coverage on the Internet, there is a software application that allows the
captions to be shown on-line. This technology is now common place with a few
companies offering it for free. If you stream your meetings currently, ask your
captioning company for this service.
There are also applications for video indexing
currently available that will allow the captions to be used to help people find
and play segments of a meeting that they are interested in viewing. Database
software along with the captioning information allows for complete video
browsing and instant searches. For example, a viewer can do a key word search
for their topic of interest and immediately find the video about that topic if
it exists.
As technology evolves and new capabilities are
developed, you can expect that it will become easier to provide captioning and
that there will be more services your channel can provide as an off-shoot of
providing the captioning. It can be a little bumpy getting started, but once you
have the equipment in place and have found reliable captioning services,
providing captioning becomes a simple service to implement for the benefit of
your community.
LINKS:
Useful Resources:
FCC Consumer Facts on captioning
FCC Fact Sheet on Closed Caption Implementation
The Media Access Group at WGBH has some useful information about captioning:
Sample report on options for closed captioning from Santa Monica, CA
Checklist for your
captioning RFP
List of different jurisdictions, captioning
vendor and rates
Hillsborough County, Florida provides the captioning
transcripts of their meetings on-line, usually within hours of the closing
gavel. Just go to
http://www.HTV22.org
and click on “captioning”.
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