As you noticed, I have been writing a lot about captioning lately. This is another one. In the past 24 hours, I learned of two major developments in captioning of online video which are too important not to mention.
- YouTube now provides real-time captioning for some of its live events, as part of the live streaming service they rolled out last month. I wrote about this potential here.
- Netflix announced yesterday an update to its Netflix iOS app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that includes captions and subtitles for its instant-streaming movies. (The video above is provided courtesy of Brendan Gramer.) This updates the article I wrote on Netflix recently.
The advances in captioning access are coming along fast and furious. YouTube and Netflix are not even required by the new 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act to provide the type of captioning they just rolled out, although there are some legal cases going through the judicial system to determine if the Americans with Disabilities Act does require them to provide captioning. So it’s good news all around.