Help NAD & NVRC Count Captioned Super Bowl Commercials

Super Bowl LXVII: Baltimore Ravens v. San Francisco Forty-Niners
Sunday, February 3, 2013 - 6:30 pm ET

On every Super Bowl night, we count! Yes, we count because we matter and because all commercials should be captioned. Everyone watches the Super Bowl for the game itself, and this year’s is an exciting one between teams coached by the Harbaugh brothers.

But people also tune into the Super Bowl for its groundbreaking commercials.

Each year, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and the Northern Virginia Resource Center (NVRC) ask everyone to count the commercials that are captioned or not captioned. Your help with the caption counting brings us closer to reaching our ideal of a fully-captioned Super Bowl from beginning to end.

To get the most accurate count, we recommend that you record Super Bowl LXVII on your DVR, VCR, or any other type of recording device so you can rewind and check your count for accuracy. You can also use the old standby of a pen and pad of paper as you sit in front of the television.

The NAD, along with the National Football League (NFL) and CBS Television Network, continues the effort to caption all national commercials and promotions prior to airing on February 3, 2013.  Technical issues may prevent captions from appearing on television sets, and we want to know about those issues. Your data on captioning of Super Bowl LXVII commercials gives the NAD and NVRC an excellent way to track successes and problems in the transmission of captions for the Super Bowl or the commercials and promotions. Your will help improve the viewing experience for everyone.

Read our "NAD, NFL & CBS Rally to Improve the Super Bowl Captioning Experience" announcement here. [2]

How to participate in this caption counting survey:

After the Super Bowl, we will post on the NAD and NVRC websites a link for the Super Bowl survey. It will include all national commercials and promotions in the order that they appear.  You will be able to give us information as to whether each commercial or promotion was captioned or not captioned on your television. The survey will also ask you what local commercials you saw and whether they were captioned.  

The survey will also ask you for the following information: city and state you where you watched the game on TV; whether you watched via cable, satellite, or antenna (and the name of your cable or satellite service); what brand and model TV you have (including whether it is analog or digital); and whether you watched the game in standard definition (SD) or high definition (HD).

If you have recorded the broadcast of the Super Bowl, you can replay and watch the broadcast again, fast-forwarding to the commercials and promotions to see the captions as you fill out the survey. Information about the captioning that you have captured on paper can also be entered.

Be sure to visit the NAD website [3] or the NVRC website [4] for more information, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @NADTweets and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NAD1880 [5].