A concern for well-timed captions is included in every definition of caption quality. Along with placement, accuracy, completeness, typography, and style (e.g. pop on or scroll up), timing is a key aspect of quality, particularly for Internet-delivered, prerecorded TV shows and streamed DVDs (where timing can be precisely controlled using “pop on” style captions). For example, according to the “First Report of the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee on the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010” (dated July 13, 2011), “the consumer must be given an experience that is equal to, if not better than, the experience provided as the content was originally aired on television.” A quality experience is defined in terms of completeness, placement, accuracy, timing, and media player capabilities (color, opacity, size, typefaces, etc.). The FCC’s recent statement on quality captioning for “Internet Protocol-Delivered Video Programming” continues to define quality in terms of a “consideration of such factors as completeness, placement, accuracy, and timing.”
Because viewers’ reading speed doesn’t align word for word with the speed of actors’ spoken delivery, and because reading speed varies from viewer to viewer, timing can never be fully controlled. A fast-reading viewer may finish reading a line of dialogue before a slow-speaking actor has finished delivering that line. What might start out as a perfectly timed caption can end up out of sync when readers finish reading before actors finish speaking. Continue reading The Power of Dots and Dashes to Tell the Future
