Hearing_Impaired_ESL_and_Closed_Captioning


 * The Benefits of Closed-Captioning for Videos**

People who are hard-of-hearing or deaf use the “closed captions” feature on their televisions or computers to watch video so that they can better follow the dialogue on the screen. This linked video articulates how helpful closed-captioning is for the deaf community, and how frustrating it can be to try to watch video content that is not captioned [], however, closed-captioning is beneficial not to just the 3.5 percent of the population with a hearing disability, but to many other groups as well.

Decades of studies also demonstrate that both children and adults can benefit from closed-captioning even if they do not have hearing loss. In studies done in Great Britain, the United States, and in India, researchers have discovered that students who watch video with captions become more fluent readers with greater word recognition and comprehension. Pairing the written captions with the spoken dialogue in video is much like a parent or teacher reading an engaging book aloud and pointing to the words on the page. Former President Clinton’s foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, championed closed-captioning (called Same Language Subtitling, or SLS) to improve mass literacy in India beginning in 2009, acting on initiatives by social entrepreneur and academic Brij Kothari. Beginning at time 2:30 in this TEDTalk video [], educator Chris Bugaj discusses how closed-captioning benefits early and struggling readers.

Closed captioning is also helpful for English language learners. Practice with decoding words and developing a richer vocabulary are benefits provided by watching video with captions, and videos can be very motivating and engaging for learners of all ages. A study by educational researchers done in 1991 demonstrated that “ students watching closed-captioned television scored higher on a number of written tests than any of the other” control groups. []

For users of the read-write web, or Web 2.0, closed captioning is easy to add to YouTube video and other types of visual media. Closed-captioning also improves the ability to search for and locate specific segments on a given topic by increasing the number of words that are associated with any given video, beyond just the title or “tags” assigned by the creator. This discoverability, called SEO, or “search engine optimization,” is important in marketing and in research, and is an often under-recognized feature of both YouTube and Google. []

[|__https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/youtube-makes-captioning-more-accessible-for-deaf-viewers/2012/02/28/gIQAjxUzfR_blog.html__]

Closed captioning on youtube is a great source for hearing impaired students as well as ESL students. If teachers have time they can write in their text for the videos or they can use the new feature of automatic captioning. In 2012 Youtube offered the automatic captioning to be in English, Korean, or Japanese. To date there are a 178 different languages to use for automatic captioning. Teachers could use this resource to film their lesson, instructions, and demonstrations. Creating a youtube channel that is private and giving students the link, they could create videos that have closed captioning for several different languages. Students with hearing Impairments or ESL then could review the video later and get the information needed.

Some disadvantages of using the automatic captioning is that if the text is not clearly picked up it will create random text that it thinks it hears. That can be easily fixed by having the teacher go back through and read the text.