Last fall I received an e-card for my birthday from a friend of mine. However, you can imagine my dismay at finding that this card contained a talking cartoon character…and no captions. While I do realize that “it’s the thought that counts,” it was still frustrating to have to deal with a common problem that the Deaf Community often faces – the lack of captioning for most on-line videos and the like.
But now, thanks to Project readOn, deaf and hard of hearing people everywhere can have access to such visual media.
Project readOn is the brainchild of Rhino Moon Captioning Ltd. When the founders of Rhino Moon – Mateo Gutierrez, John Erskine, and Jack Wood – realized that there was a tremendous need for such, they were determined to make it their mission to bring captions to the internet in a revolutionary new way. As Mateo states:
“our motto is Access for All!”
The concept of Project readOn is to bridge the gap between the captioning process and the people who really need and use captions. With most captioning provided by television and film, the actual users of captioning services have practically no say in the process, or in deciding what gets captioned. With Project readOn, the very people who need and want captions can request the captioning they want of various on-line media – such as entertainment, news, sports, music, education, politics, etc.
John (whose significant other has several Deaf family members) explains it:
“Since the very people who need and want captions can come to use and request them, we at Project readOn hope to have a very close relationship with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community. They are the community that we directly serve, listen to, and respond to. That’s really exciting and meaningful to us. It’s a lot more rewarding to interact with people than it is to deal with bureaucracy and regulations.”
What is even more exciting is that these captioning services are provided for free. Project readOn does not charge anyone to request captioning or to use the their services to read captions of videos.
Videos come from a wide variety of sources such as You Tube, Link TV, Google video, My Space Video, Alto Vista, and Encylomedia. Both the Democratic and Republican National Parties have supplied videos which have been captioned upon request by Project readOn.
Since Project readOn is a project of Rhino Moon Captioning Ltd, it uses all of the various resources available through Rhino Moon – including a full staff of transcribers and editors, as well as the various equipment and software necessary to create the captions and put them on-line. Project readOn has a solid website focused on user-generated requests; a strong administrative data base and hosting capability; and a fully built, tested, and true operation capable of providing professionally prepared captions to users at an unlimited scope.
However, one thing that can limit Project readOn’s ability to respond to the captioning needs of the community is funding. As Jack explains:
“We have tremendous sourcing capabilities and the sky is the limit, but we have to work with the community to make this a financially sound model. We have currently invested over a full year of work and tens of thousands of dollars to see this project off the ground. Today every piece of content on the Project readOn website needs to be paid for in order to be captioned and there is no single revenue stream coming into Project readOn.”
The Project readOn partnership is looking at many options for potential funding – including grants, outside funding, advertising, and sponsorships. Project readOn could be viewed as being similar to Public Television (such as the one that recently broadcast “Through Deaf Eyes”), or Public Radio: it relies on the public’s generous contributions to keep it in business. The more people give the more that can be done. Every dollar that comes to Project readOn goes directly to the service, so that users get to see captions on whatever they want, whenever they want.
One big bonus is that a single captioned video can literally reach any single person in the world who has an internet connection. It’s not a one-time broadcast. This is a value that is relatively unheard of, and in itself makes the investment worthwhile.
In the beginning Project readOn went out and attempted to provide a broad variety of different captioned videos, by selecting those which were thought to be of interest to viewers. However, since going live about a month ago, the demand for content has been steady and strong, with the result that the project no longer needs to select videos itself – it’s kept busy responding to the requests that come in. While the majority of such requests come from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community, requests can be taken from hearing individuals as well. For example, if a hearing person has created an educational video on his website and wishes it to be captioned for the benefit of deaf or hard of hearing viewers, all he has to do is contact Project readOn and make a request.
The Project readOn staff wishes to express their greatest appreciation to the community. Says Mateo:
“We could not be more thrilled at the response to date. There has been a tremendous amount of support from individuals as well as more established national organizations that support the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community.
People seem very excited by what we are doing…they come to us with incredible appreciation and great suggestions on how to improve. We are just incredibly grateful for all the attention we are getting…we are committed to the concept of Access for All and we are having a lot of fun doing it. Thanks to everyone for their support!”
The future of Project readOn truly lies in the hands of the community it serves. While the people at Rhino Moon Captioning Ltd. have set it up and will run it and make it work, this project requires all of our help – sending in requests, providing feedback, and supporting it financially with dollars.
And the next time a friend sends me a non-captioned video, I won’t have to scream and pull my hair out in frustration.
I’ll just contact my buds at Project readOn instead.
For more information about Project readOn, visit their website at
or contact them via email at
support@projectreadon.com
This sculpture shows the sign for "connect"...and that is what Deaf Pagan Crossroads is all about - making connections. Connections between Deafhood and Paganism, connections between the Deaf Community and the Hearing Community, connections between myself as the writer and you as the reader. I hope you will take the time to read my various posts, some of which are listed below. Welcome to the Crossroads, and I hope you make some connections here!
Deaf Pagan Crossroads 
Yes, this is a wonderful service and I thank the people at Project readOn.
I am curious if Deaf people could do like a fundraiser event to make money, donate to Project readOn?
To Linda ~
Your idea of an event to raise money for Project readOn sounds like a great one to me! I think it’s a good idea!
I cannot speak for Project readOn, but I think they would appreciate any and all donations, and a fundraiser would be a good way to raise money to help support them.
~ Ocean
It’s a pity that the SMIL video format (promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium) didn’t catch on. It’s a format which combines RAM videos with a simple XML file which can be presented in a variety of ways (scrolling autocue style, marquee, etc.) and add captions alongside the video. It’s quite easy to do, so all web developers should be using it if they have videos to put online.
Captioning is also quite easy to do with Flash movies, because you can embed them in the Flash files together.
Whilst Project ReadOn is a good idea, captioning is something that should be done automatically by all web developers who put videos online. It’s not difficult; I’ve done it, and so should they. Anyway, accessibility is a legal requirement.
In theory, Yvonne…I agree with you.
But it’s not that simple.
Project readOn is a good idea because it is one that is needed. You are right – it would be nice if web developers would automatically caption their videos which they put online. But let’s get realistic here…how many of them are willing to do so?
We can’t even get the bigwigs like NBC, CNN, etc. to caption the videos they put up on their sites – those excerpts of the news that you see in their sites are NOT captioned.
If we can’t even get these folks to caption their videos, what hope do we have to get the everyday average John Doe to consider doing the same for a simple home video he creates and puts up at You Tube? To require that every single individual who puts a video on the web must caption it may not be feasible.
“Accessibility is a legal requirement.”
Welll…yes. But if accessibility was that simple to establish and enforce, then all videos online would be captioned, and there would be no need for a service like Project readOn. All movies shown at all movie theaters at all times all over the country would be captioned. All television programs would be captioned (and right now, here in the States there is a battle going on over governmental exemptions from having to provide captioning on certain tv programs). All plays and concerts and other theatric venues would provide sign language interpreters and/or CART services. Doctors, lawyers, tax preparers, etc. would provide interpreters when meeting with Deaf consumers.
Unfortunately, when it comes to accessibility, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community often gets left behind.
It would be nice if everyone would take the kind of time and attention to providing accessibility that you have, but most people just don’t think about it.
They figure they don’t have to.
Project readON sounds like a great idea. I always thought that they should do something like this and soon or they should have done it a long time ago because I love viewing you tube videos and others online. They’re funny to watch and they should have captioning so everyone can enjoy them. My family likes to donate to one fundraiser a year. Two if we’re undecided and I definitely want to bring this to their attention.
Hi Ocean
I agree that most web developers aren’t captioning their videos, and that most of the content out there in the wild isn’t captioned. I think Project ReadOn looks like a really great service — I just think we shouldn’t stop trying to raise awareness of accessibility among web developers & designers, otherwise people might just abdicate responsibility and let the experts deal with it. We need a two-pronged approach.
I also think that the more “traditional” disability support services should be more aware of web-related issues. I have noticed that I am often a lone voice reminding people about web accessibility on disability committees and other equal opportunities fora.
Hi Yvonne ~
I agree with you…we definitely need to keep raising awareness. Most people don’t stop to think about accessibility – especially if it is not an issue you personally have to contend with, or have family members/friends who struggle with such.
As we become increasingly dependent on technology, we do need to stop and think about how that technology can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is giving me more freedom and more access than I ever dreamed I would have ten or twenty years ago (internet, email, IM, pagers, webcams, videophones, video relay services, etc.)… but on the other hand it is also bringing with it a whole new series of accessibility issues that we need to address.
One example is what we have already discussed here – captioning of on-line videos. Another is the cost of high-speed internet access to run videophones, etc. Some individuals can’t afford cable hook-ups and the like, even when videophones are available for free. We spend hours researching and trying to find the right wireless plan that will give us the coverage and service we want, without all the stuff we don’t use and don’t need (such as voice plans), but are still expected to pay for.
Being an advocate speaking up on accessibility issues can indeed be a lonely thing. But don’t despair, and don’t give up. Know that your efforts are appreciated. It may seem like a thankless task, but we need folks like you out there spreading the word.
Hi everyone,
First off I want to thank all of you for checking out our site and for your feedback. Without your input we will never be as good a service as you deserve.
Secondly I wanted to comment on why we at Project readOn created the player that you have all seen.
Embedding text in videos is indeed not that difficult to do, however it is somewhat time intensive which I suspect is the reason why a lot of web developers do not engage in such a process. Captioning itself is a bit more complicated than just adding text to the video. Many view captioning as an art form so to speak. This is because there are subtle things in the file that you may take for granted, such as descriptions, timing (which is not so subtle), placement of the captions on screen to indicate who is speaking, what to italicize and when etc. I can’t speak to exactly why more videos of a more amateur nature are not captioned, but I can tell you why most shows that you see captioned on TV are not captioned online. Pulling the caption file off of line 21, which is where the captions reside in your signal, and remastering to multiple media formats is an intricate, time consuming and expensive process. Each media format has its own distinct nuances which require different hardware for each to complete remastering of each file. I have never worked for a television network so I can only assume that time, labor and cost are the main reasons you don’t see captions for most online media.
This brings me to Project readOn. We simply put our heads together and brainstormed various ways to make this happen without having to go through all the steps normally required. What we have created may not be perfect, but it is simple and it is universal. It works with all media formats and across multiple platforms. In order to achieve this we had to keep the caption player separate from the media, which is why you have to synch from the beginning. Easy to do once you get used to it. We do not reuse captions already created, but start from scratch and caption everything on our own. As you can imagine there are numerous legal reasons why we cannot repurpose the captions previously created.
This is just a brief insight into why we have done things a certain way, but I hope it helps.
Thanks!
So often someone sends me a link to an online video which I will view and find entertaining and funny. Often times they make my day (laughter is the best medicine!), and my first thoughts are wanting to share such with my good friends like Ocean to bring a smile to them as well, but alas, they are not captioned, so I have not been able to pass the laughter along to any of my Deaf friends. Thank you to the folks at Project readOn for providing this service!
Actually, a good friend recently sent me a video that was not captioned. Although I was able to get much of the video since it was pretty self-explanatory, there was some dialogue at the beginning and the end that I was curious about.
Unfortunately, my friend sent me an attachment that included the actual video itself, rather than a link for the video on-line. To clarify, Project readOn cannot caption videos sent as an attachment at this time – they need to have an actual web address that they can refer to for the content, so they can tie the caption file to it.
Well, the guys at Project readOn actually took the time to track down the video, find it over at My Tube, and then caption Ellen’s comments for me (it was a video that originally appeared on Ellen DeGeneres talk show). You can now find it on the Project readOn website, under Most Recent – “Smart Dog on Ellen DeGeneres.”
I had to laugh at what Ellen said…and I totally agreed with her – clean your darn pool, folks! And that is one smart dog…all mine ever learned to do was steal food off the kitchen counter. 😦
[…] and Three Bars of Soap and a Massage), captioning of on-line videos (How to Caption Your Videos and Project readOn), and video relay services (Love, Dating, and Deaf Dads). Others focused on sign language (A Pagan […]
I’ve just been looking at this again, in view of DeafPundit’s current campaign, and noticed that projectReadOn are saying that they’ve got more requests for captioning than developers to do it. How about approaching the open source community for developers to volunteer to caption videos, and making the projectReadOn captioning tool available to volunteers? It’s a good skill to acquire, judging by what Jack says above.
It’s a shame that SMIL only works with RAM files (as far as I know) – in fact the BBC use the RAM format, so they could do SMIL alongside it.