Friday, July 27, 2007

415: I Can't Watch the NY Times

Sigh. It's been a long month. I'm starting a new career and have no time for blogging. But to this I make an exception... this follows hard on the heels of Shane Feldman's recent blog about the lack of online captioning on CNN.

In the middle of an intense course of study this summer, I decide to purchase the TimesSelect. I love the New York Times and always have. While reading this newfound addition to my computer, I notice the Times has video. Unfortunately, none of the specific videos produced by the NY Times or posted on their website are subtitled.

I emailed their access dept., the TimesSelect people, and a couple others on their list. I'd love to be able to use this stuff or at least watch it myself.

Nope. They don't have captioning. Well, I shot back, do you have a schedule to include captioning? We'd like to do it one day, but we don't know when this will happen. Uh-huh. As Shane implies, this is getting tired. Subtitling comes included with most video editing programs, which means it's free. The only reason not to include subtitles is laziness.

I keep emailing one person a week. If you'd like to email people also, click on this link. What's really ironic? By using the TimesSelect Article Archive, I can go back to 1989 and read every single article of support the New York Times had for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I guess it's a case of monkey say, monkey not do. But when the entire country is concerned about reading skills of Deaf people, shouldn't we get a little more respect when we're fighting just to get to the point where we have words to read? And, I mean, what about the kids?