Despite the efforts of YouTube of other top video hosts, the Web still lags behind TV in closed-captioning. "Media companies say they are working hard to make online video more accessible," reports
The New York Times. "But big gaps remain much to the dismay of deaf Web users ... Television episodes on
CBS.com, news videos on CNN.com and entertainment clips on MSN.com all lack captions, to name a few." The Times, meanwhile, calls NBC.com "inconsistent" in its close-captioning efforts. YouTube is
credited with supplying the accurate captions using voice-recognition software, while ESPN is offering captions for its live streams of World Cup matches.
Advocates are pushing Congress to
pass an update to the bill that would mandate captions on any online video that has also appeared on TV, while a collection of industry groups is close to finishing a universal standard for online
captions, which, according to The Times, would make it easier to adapt TV captions to other formats.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
