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Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

I hate to see lawsuits like this, but unfortunately it is the only way to get captions on the majority of content. TV would not have captions if it weren't for the brave fight of some deaf activists.

I never really appreciated captions much, but my wife does not speak English as her first language, and not having captions on a movie sometimes means she will be bored and unable to enjoy it with me.

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It's not the only way. In the article it says that Netflix already has 30% of streaming content captioned, with plans to expand that to 80% by the end of the year.

Well, that puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it? If they are actively working on it, that proves that they're not discriminatory. This is a pure opportunistic cash grab.

Opportunistic is a bit harsh. I think it's more to force Netflix to make this a priority. Sure they're "working on it", but I doubt it's a huge priority since it affects, percentage wise, a small portion of their audience.

I bought my mother a third-party device for her television so she could stream Netflix last Christmas only to find out that Closed Captioning wasn't supported. It was pretty depressing - she couldn't use it at all because she is hearing impaired.

There's a reason why there are laws in place for compliance - often times good business strategy and "accessibility for all" don't align.

One of my best friends is profoundly deaf, and (obviously) they really transform her experience. Only 0.2 to 0.4% of the population in the US is "functionally deaf", but I think the principle is important: if it's required on TV, why not on the Internet?

It's easy to forget about accessibility. Another friend can't use iOS devices because he's mobility impaired, and is a little dismayed by the broad move to touch-based devices. But they're cool to develop for, right?

>> if it's required on TV, why not on the Internet

You certainly need to be careful that requiring captions doesn't require everybody putting a video on Youtube to caption it. As great as that would be for deaf people (and for searching video), it's a burden that might kill a lot of things.

The move to touch-based devices being hard for the disabled/elderly/etc. is an issue I've been thinking about too. It's a hard problem but one that will hopefully spur some innovation in the coming years.

iOS devices that come with the VoiceOver screen reader are changing the lives of visually impaired people who were formerly limited to bulky and/or very expensive devices with a limited selection of apps for mobile use. Nowadays, any iPhone or iPad sold in stores works out of the box to do everything from making phone calls to email, browsing, gps, games, productivity apps, facebook, and more spoken in dozens of languages, displayed with different zoom levels and higher contrast, and even in conjunction with bluetooth braille displays.

I also remember back when Apple introduced easy to use videochat in iChat with the iSight in ~2003 and again with FaceTime in iOS devices, and my deaf/hard of hearing friends thought this was an awesome alternative way to communicate.

They are cool to develop for, and I feel incredibly lucky to be working on an iPad app for visually impaired people right now and to help said people learn how to use the screenreader. It's amazing how I've watched some people go from technophobia caused by progressive vision loss to being inseparable from their newly purchased iPad/iPhone and doing more than they ever learned to do on traditional computers.

The Apple Accessibility team is made up of incredibly cool people that always seem to be open to suggestions to better improve their products. Your friend should shoot them an email at accessibility@apple.com instead of just grumbling about how iOS devices are out of his reach. I remember a lot of blind folks I knew that grumbled a lot when the iPhone first came out, because they thought an all-touch interface meant that the device was doomed for use for the blind. That turned out to be very, very wrong. You never know what they might have in mind, and maybe your friend has some cool ideas to pass on.

Maybe splitting hairs, but actually I think it was a law passed by Congress that mandated captions for broadcast television, not the threat of civil lawsuits.

English captions, or captions in her native language?

English captions help a lot for someone that doesn't speak English as their first language. She has a pretty decent grasp on it, but when actors talk fast, it can sometimes be tough to get it all. Captions help.

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