Captions in schools

Captioning is a transcription of the audio elements of a TV program, movie, DVD, performance or other media, giving access to people who are deaf or have a hearing loss. Unlike subtitles, captions include song lyrics, descriptions of sound effects and music, and are often positioned and coloured so as to make it easier for the viewer to identify who is speaking.

Some benefits of captioning

• Captioning provides equitable educational access to curriculum support material for deaf and hearing impaired students and improves learning outcomes by assisting information acquisition and reading skills.
• Captions assist in the development of English language and reading skills and can be considered as a positive interplay between the use of text and the relevant sounds and images, to create meaning and thereby facilitate comprehension.
• The provision of access via captioning helps reduce students’ feelings of isolation and increases independence.
• Through the use of captioning, missing information can be provided to those students who have difficulty processing speech and also the auditory components of visual media.
• Captions provide students with content relevant vocabulary for specific subject areas in the appropriate context.Captioning is beneficial to those learning English as a second language, those with reading and literacy problems, in addition to deaf and hearing impaired students.

Television captioning

Many school and other programs made for school-age students are captioned, such as Australia’s most popular school’s program Behind the News (ABC). In Australia many programs are captioned, including all programs between 6pm and 10.30pm and all news and current affairs programs.

Equipment in the classroom

To watch captions in a classroom you need to have some equipment, all of which is available from a general electrical equipment store. Ideally you will have:


• A digital television or analog television with a digital set-top box connected. All televisions and set-top boxes that meet the Australian standard 4933 will decode and display captions. An analog teletext television will also decode and display captions, but analog television will be switched off in a few years and a digital receiver allows you to access additional digital channels (including ABC2 which carries a lot of school-age programming during the day).
• A hard drive recorder to allow you to record captioned programs to watch at a later time (subject to copyright issues).
• A standard DVD player (which could be incorporated into a computer). Captions on DVDs appear as a menu item, so any DVD player is suitable for watching captioned DVDs in the classroom.
• If you want to watch subscription (pay) television services such as Foxtel or Austar, the subscription decoder box will allow you to select captions as a menu item. You can also include a hard drive recorder (Foxtel’s is called iQ) as part of a subscription package. This allows you to record captioned programs (including while you are watching another captioned program).
  

Captioned DVDs

Many entertainment and general release DVDs are captioned and can be found on the rental shelves and for purchase in regular DVD outlets. Some specialist education titles are also captioned. Media Access Australia publishes the MAA Education DVD catalogue which lists these DVDs, their distributors and other information. The catalogue is updated every quarter and can be downloaded from their website.


MAA also administers the Captioning Grant for Community and Education DVDs which is funded by the Federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. The main objective of the grant is to ensure that subject areas that have not been captioned in the past are made available with captions (which could include history, geography, science, lifeskills etc). DVDs that are used in teaching situations, but are considered to be “entertainment” (such as a DVD version of a text being studied) should be captioned for general release and would not be eligible for funding under this grant. DVDs eligible for the grant must be first-release (or a major re-release) and available to the public in Australia.

Teachers and other professionals who know of upcoming DVDs can submit a request to Media Access Australia that these be captioned under the grant and they will investigate whether this is possible.

Internet and downloads

Increasing amounts of media are being made available either as downloads or streaming on the Internet, including material suitable for schools. Generally, this material is not accessible.

Self-captioning software

Some teachers and students prepare audio-visual material for classroom use, or as part of homework assignments. Whilst broadcast captioning software is far too expensive and complex for classroom/homes needs, there are other tools available. A good starting point is dotSUB [http://www.dotsub.com/]. This is an American website that allows you to post videos and use dotSUB’s tools to produce captions. The use of the software is free for non-commercial videos.

Related articles

• What are captions?
• Captions on your television
• Captions and DVDs
  

Further information
For more information about captions in schools, contact:
Media Access Australia
Suite 4.08
22-36 Mountain Street
Ultimo NSW
2007
Phone: 02 9212 6242 

TTY: 02 9212 6242

Fax: 02 9212 6289 

Email: info@mediaaccess.org.au

Information provided by:




Reproduced with permission.
Date reviewed: 12.11.2008