Web Captioning

Video distributed on the World Wide Web can and should be captioned. The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), at the WGBH Educational Foundation, in Boston, is a good source of information: www.wgbh.org/caption. Federal agencies must now caption their video and web information, as required by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at www.w3.org/WAI are widely used and have been endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These guidelines explain how to caption video on the Web and/or offer text transcriptions. WGBH is another good source of help on these matters, as is the Described Captioned Media Program (DCMP), www.cfv.org and 1-800-237-6819.

Opinion is divided as to whether streaming video on the Web is required to be captioned by law. Under some interpretations of law, these are "information services" not regulated by federal law. Under other interpretations, at least some of these streaming videos may be considered to be "broadcasting" which is subject to FCC regulation, or services of public entities and places of public accommodation which are subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Web programming offered by federal government agencies or by federal contractors must be accessible, under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Regardless of the final determination on these matters, the NAD strongly encourages producers and distributors of streaming video to caption those offerings.