Television Literacy: Comprehension of Program Content Using Closed Captions for the Deaf (original) (raw)

2001, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education

With the intent of making television accessible to people who are deaf and hard of hearing, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 states that all U.S.-sold television sets with screens 13 inches or larger are required to have built-in closed caption decoders. Because English is auditorally inaccessible to the deaf, their English-literacy rate is quite low. Yet, in the United States, television captions are generally in written English. The goal of this research is to determine how accessible television is to the deaf population by assessing the comprehension of television programs with and without captions. Specifically, this project examines comprehension for deaf and hearing participants under four conditions: (1) a video with captions (no audio), (3) a captioned display on a black screen (with no picture), (3) a transcript of captions without video, and (4) a video with captions, viewed twice. Comprehension is based each student's score on a criterion-referenced test. Results indicate that reading level (measured by SAT score) is highly correlated with con~prehension test scores. When SAT is held constant, hearing students outperform deaf students on comprehension measures. For both hearing and deaf students, comprehension scores tended to be highest for the captioned video. Deaf students, however, lag behind hearing students in their ability to generalize their reading skills and use prior knowledge to answer questions correctly. An intensive literacy intervention was conducted to address these issues, but the results were not significant. These findings suggest a need for improving deaf students' access to prior knowledge and other literacy skills. In addition, these results bring into question the issue of true accessibility and suggest a change in captioning technology may be necessary. Television Literacy 3 Television Literacy: Comprehension of Program Content Using Closed-Captions for the Deaf Equal access to educational opportunities for children and youth with disabilities has become an important focus of special education related services. Televisions are ubiquitous in our society; education through television starts at home, in nursery and preschool settings, by the availability to very young children of programs such as Sesame Street. Television continues to shape our knowledge and understanding of our culture and of the broader world. The audio component of television, however, is inherently inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard-ofhearing. The advent of "captioned television" opened new possibilities for this population to access television media. Captioning is the typewritten version of the audio component of television, providing a visual display of the dialogue, narration, music and sound effects for those who cannot hear. Captions are typically displayed at the bottom of the television screen on most television sets; "closed" captions refer to captions that are not immediately visible to the viewer, but can be turned "on" through the television remote control or an external decoder. In contrast, "open" captions, like subtitles, are visible to all viewers and can not be turned "off '. With the intent of making television accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 states that all US-sold television sets with screens 13 inches or larger are required to have built-in closed caption decoders. As more television programs are captioned, it is still not clear how many people are fully able to utilize this technology. Do captions make TV completely accessible to the deaf, Because making use of captions involves "reading television," reading is an essential skill for understanding captions and, by extension, comprehending television programs. The process of reading involves the use of prior knowledge and short-term memory; for individuals who are Television Literacy 4 deaf, it may also require skill in a spoken language (i-e., English) which they have not mastered. Thus, issues of literacy, conceptual knowledge and memory constraints come to bear on the comprehension of television captions. Therefore, the goal of this research is to determine how accessible television content is to the deaf viewer by assessing comprehension of television programs with and without captions. Literacv Issues According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the National Adult Literacy Survey, literacy is defined as "using printed and written information to function in society, to acheve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential." This definition implies that a literate individual should be able to use and critically assess printed and written information within a variety of modes and contexts (Padden & Ramsey, 1993). Development of a first language, regardless of the mode of communication, is essential for facility with language,