• Overview of different types of captioning - from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders describes what captioning is and provides examples and explanations of the different types of captioning available.

    Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART)

    Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is a technique used by court reporters to provide realtime word-for-word translation of the spoken word into English text using a stenotype machine.

    Texas Court Reporters Association-CART Foundation (TCRA-CART) is a group of Texas court reporters who provide CART.

    C-Print

    C-Print is a system for transcribing spoken English to text in realtime using a conventional computer keyboard and shorthand conversion software. C-Print provides meaning-for-meaning translation rather than word-for-word. C-Print was developed at the National Institute for the Deaf (NTID).

    Typewell

    Typewell is another system for transcribing spoken English meaning-for-meaning to text.

    Captioned Movies

    Technology

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued regulations requiring digital movie theaters to have and maintain the equipment necessary to provide closed captioning and audio description at a movie patron’s seat whenever showing a digital movie produced, distributed or otherwise made available with these features. National Association of the Deaf explains more about caption access in movie theaters.

    These technologies can include:

    • open captioning
    • on-screen captioning projection systems
    • seat-based display systems, frequently referred to as "rear-view mirror"


    Where to Find

    You can do a search, by geographic area and date, for captioned movies near you by visiting one of these sites:


    Described and Captioned Media Program

    The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) provides services designed to support and improve the academic achievement of students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind by providing free-loan described and captioned educational media. This educational media is made accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing via captioning and to the blind and visually impaired via description. With over 4,000 titles (and growing!) available for viewing, the DCMP is continuing to provide equal accessibility to these students and the professionals who serve them. There are no user-registration or service fees.

    Open/Closed Captioning

    Open captioning refers to captioning that is available to all viewers. Closed captioning refers to captioning that is available only to viewers who choose to access it in some special mode (such as a CC button on a web video).

    Captioned YouTube Videos

    YouTube videos - captioned videos are numbering in the hundreds of thousands, but still a small selection comparatively, and are captioned using auto-caps or automatic-captions (a combination of Google's Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology and YouTube's caption system). The auto-caps are not always perfect and the variety of videos is limited (mostly educational sites) but they can be available in 51 languages and this does give you an insight into the current state of the art of ASR technology.