What Is Closed Captioning?
Closed Captioning is a display of text on any visual medium to create an interpretation of an utterance to provide information to a person or group of people who otherwise would not have accessibility to the utterance in question.
I performed a small "experiment" where I typed the following into Google: 'definition of closed captioning'. I was interested to find that the first result to pop up was a brief definition of Closed Captioning, which is as follows: "provide a program with closed captions" (Google, 2015).
This is the first among numerous problems with Closed Captioning. The problem with the above definition provided by Google is that it does not put enough emphasis on making content more accessible to those without natural access to Closed Captioning. Imagine, if we followed that definition of Closed Captioning, what some negative results might be, as is shown in this first image below.
This is a prime example of a negative effect of a provision of Closed Captioning on a television program where the closed captioning has referred to celebrity Zooey Deschanel as the Boston marathon bomber. The definition of Closed Captioning as displayed on Google is evident, but is it good enough to simply plaster some words on a screen and be done with it? Who is getting the short end of the stick?