The Curb Cut Effect: Accessible Design
One of the incredible things about accessibility is how a product or tool developed for one group can end up benefiting many others. This is called the “curb cut effect”; when a modification for a niche group—in the case of curb cuts, wheelchair users—becomes widespread and improves access and quality of life for people with strollers, walkers, rolling luggage and more.
Closed Captioning is for Everyone
Another great example of this is closed captioning. For many years, television and movie programming was less than ideal for people with hearing loss. If you’ve ever been in a waiting room or workout area where all the TVs were on mute and it was difficult to follow what’s happening in the show, you can imagine how frustrating it might be if that were the case for everything you watched.
The very first attempts at captioning were in the late 1940s when producers began to experiment with etching captions onto the film once it was complete.
Concerted efforts to make captions widely available did not begin until the early 1970s, when broadcast networks began experimenting with embedding captions within the television signal.
The French Chef, hosted by Julia Child, became the first open captioned program on TV (meaning that captions were on for all viewers and could not be turned off) in 1973. As technology advanced, broadcasters were able to encode captions into the television signal, but users needed a special (and expensive) decoder box attached to their TV in order to access the captioned programs.
During the 1980s and ‘90s, more and more programs were captioned until finally, in 1993, all new TV sets came with the decoder chip embedded, so users could turn captions on and off as needed.
In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have made it possible to live-caption many kinds of digital content on-the-fly, like YouTube videos, or social media posts. Additionally, advancements in caption delivery have been adding even more value to watching movies and shows. According to Caption with Intention©, they offer a dynamic captioning system that adds unprecedented emotion, context, and clarity to enhance the viewing experience for viewers, using 3 distinct features:
- Attribution: Using different text colors for each character to indicate who is speaking.
- Synchronization: Aligning the captions with the timing of the actor’s speech, so that everyone watching gets the joke at the same time, for example.
- Intonation: Using visual cues to convey the emotions, volume and pitch of the words.
Importantly, the new system was designed with extensive involvement from people who are deaf or have hearing loss. Focus group participants at the Chicago Hearing Society described it as “like seeing the movie for the first time,” even when viewing films they’d watched with traditional captions many times before.
The system is available for studios, producers and creators to download and apply to their content. Keep an eye out on the closed caption or accessibility menu of your device for Caption with Intention viewing options!
How Those with Hearing Loss Can Still Enjoy TV
For those with hearing loss or hearing aids, there are often other ways to improve your TV-viewing experience without cranking up the volume. Some hearing aids are capable of connecting directly to your device or TV, providing real-time, synchronized captioning and sound. Learn more about your hearing aid options with Associated Audiologists, who provide comprehensive hearing evaluations and personalized treatment for hearing, tinnitus and balance issues.
