Everyone Watches TV with Subtitles Now. How’d That Happen?
Closed captioning has only risen in popularity in the past few years. What caused that?
You're viewing a single thread.
I’m just deaf and happy y’all’re seeing the light. My father was annoyed with mom’s captions. My wife used them before we met
I'm also hearing impaired and am just really glad that captions are becoming so popular.
It used to be that YouTube was rarely accessible to me. There would be a tiny amount of content that had subtitles (sometimes baked in, like epic rap battles of history does), but the vast majority of videos just weren't fun for me because I'd miss too much. These days a good chunk of popular YouTubers have curated captions and another good chunk are clear enough speakers that the automatic captions work.
I've actually been watching more YouTube in recent times than ever before specifically because I've been discovering all this content I previously wrote off. There was recently a post somewhere that introduced me to Technology Connections. And from there, I figured I'd check out some other names I had heard about that might be interesting, Linus's tech tips and ElectroBOOM, and both had captions, too.
My wife and I actually just finished the newest technology connections video. I watched it enough that she got interested in what her dork wife was enjoying. But yeah I really love the rise of captioned YouTube. TC is extra great because he’s been captioning his videos explicitly to be accessible for the deaf/hoh community because he cares about accessibility and I really just want more people to seriously consider that.
I have a whole ass rant about how people think of hearing aid users as all old folks and that hinders my ability to get flashy ones both for style and signaling purposes. But it also comes into play in contexts like this where content aimed at 20-30 somethings will historically just not bother accommodating us as much as stuff aimed at older people.
Alec is a total bro. I have no particular need for subtitles myself, but recommend his channel to people learning English because I know we can totally trust the subtitles, they're not autogenerated.
He really is. Though I do warn people that if they watch him they will develop a firm understanding and appreciation of the refrigeration cycle
And strong opinions on car signal lights
