National Association of the Deaf

Education takes place everywhere. As stated in "Those Who Can, Teach," Ryan and Cooper, 1996, a teacher education text now in its eighth edition, "The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the guests on a late-night television talk show, from a child with a disability to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has certain predictability, education quite often takes us by surprise. We go to the movies to relax and come home with a vivid sense of poverty's corrupting influence. We get into a casual conversation with a stranger and discover how little we know about other religions. Education is a lifelong process; it starts long before we begin school and should be a part of our entire lives."

The terms "educational, news, and informational" in reference to the captioning and description of television, and video materials should therefore be defined as broadly as possible. Any and all television, video, film and multimedia materials (henceforth referred to as "materials"), have the potential to expose the viewer to new ideas, contribute to the development of communication, expose the viewer to cultural, communicative or mental experiences and advance the formation of common communicative and cultural understanding. Limits on captioning are limits on learning. The definitions should remain open-ended. There should be no limit or restrictions in defining educational, news and informational materials.

If there must be a formal definition of those terms, then we offer the following, within the context of the first paragraph, above:

• Educational: any material that acquaints the viewer with matters of interest or importance, contributes to the development of an informed society with shared cultural and communicative understanding, and encourages dialogue. Any material that instructs or informs, whether by intention and design, or incidentally by presentation of information through fictional as well as nonfictional dialogue.

• News: a report of events, whether local, state, national, foreign or international.

• Informational: any material that imparts knowledge or intelligence including those that expose the viewer to the cultural, communicative, physical, mental or emotional experience.

Education is the process of acquiring general knowledge and of developing the powers of reasoning and judgment. Viewing television news and informational programming or videos, as well as entertainment programming/media, enables individuals to incidentally acquire pertinent knowledge about the world. Such acquirements most often do not occur in a formal education setting. Without captioning, access to the crucial common knowledge of our world community will be lost to deaf and hard of hearing children and adults. To a large extent, this common knowledge and collective memory allows people to communicate, to work collaboratively, and to live together. For example, the current phrase cropping up in conversations across America, "Is that your final answer?", with its connotations, comes from an extremely popular quiz show. Without captioning, deaf and hard of hearing people would not know of this phrase or its common usage.

Education is also the imparting of information and one cannot separate the two. There are different forms of education including "the formal learning process that takes place in schools and the entire universe of informal learning." An example of crucial knowledge being disseminated through the informal learning process are the Miranda warnings that the police are required to state when they make an arrest. This important constitutional protection has become common civic knowledge through repetitive exposure in various media. In other words, the nuances associated with the imparting and receipt of such warnings have become common knowledge through the broadcast as well as video mediums. For deaf and hard of hearing individuals, this would not happen without broad-based captioning access. Without full access to a wide range of captioned programming, deaf and hard of hearing children and adults would thus not have access to common knowledge, which would then put them at a serious disadvantage in a competitive global economy.

The National Education Goals (Goals 2000) state that "every adult will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy." Those same goals also expect that all children in America "will start school ready to learn." Literate adults must be able to gather and understand information on a variety of subjects through a number of different modes. Without full captioning access, deaf and hard of hearing individuals would clearly be excluded from full and effective participation in society at large.

The captioning of materials enable individuals with hearing disabilities to watch television and videos along with their non-disabled family members and peers. By affording disabled and non-disabled individuals with the ability to watch such materials together, this gives rise to greater opportunities for educational discourse -- that is, these individuals are then able to discuss what they are watching and exchange pertinent information and thoughts regarding the subject at hand.

Educational, news and informational programs have different meanings depending on age, reading level, area of interest, and other viewer factors. Clearly, definitions adopted by the U.S. Department of Education must not exclude viewers of differing ages, backgrounds, interests, and abilities.

Watching closed and opened captioned media has been demonstrated time and time again to improve literacy skills through experiential as well as incidental learning. This is true not only for deaf and hard of hearing individuals, but also for those individuals for whom English is a second language.

If a government restricts certain materials from being viewed or heard by people with disabilities, the government is stating that those people are unable to judge for themselves whether the materials are of any benefit. Any criteria must be applied in a manner that avoids reliance on value judgment or moral judgments about the ideas discussed in, or espoused by, any particular program or type of programming. The decision to include a program or category of programming within the criteria should not be viewed as an endorsement of the views expressed by that program. Instead, the U.S. Department of Education must foster captioning of materials without regard to the perceived moral or ethical nature of material. The decision to restrict funding as a result of narrow criteria will result in the exclusion of people who utilize captioning from access to the media, which is a critical source of common experience and cultural identification. The educational, informational and news value of the media can only be fully achieved through access to the media as it is, not as we would like the media to be.

In the findings of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) itself, Congress recognized that an essential element of our national policy is to ensure full participation of individuals with disabilities. A restrictive definition of "educational captioning" will prevent full participation by deaf and hard of hearing people in society -- which is contrary to the ideals and goals for which the IDEA stands. The U.S. Department of Education has an obligation to do what it can do to ensure full participation in society by all people.

The criteria must emphasize inclusion rather than exclusion. The term "educational, news, and informational" in reference to the captioning and description of television and video materials should therefore be defined as broadly as possible so as to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not excluded from the opportunity to share and learn from common experiences. Any and all television, video, film and multimedia materials have the potential to be educational and should therefore be captioned at all times.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD), established in 1880, is the nation's oldest and largest consumer based disability organization safeguarding the accessibility and civil rights of 28 million deaf and hard of hearing Americans in education, employment, health care, and telecommunications. The mission of the National Association of the Deaf is to promote, protect, and preserve the rights and quality of life of deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the United States of America. The NAD focuses on grassroots advocacy and empowerment; captioned media; deaf-related information and publications; legal assistance; policy development and research; public awareness; certification of interpreters and American Sign Language instructors; and youth leadership development.