If you're a regular watcher of television, you've probably noticed that most programs are prefaced by a little notice that says "closed captioning provided by" and the name of a company. Those who can hear pay little attention to such notices, but for the deaf and hard of hearing, captioning is essential for their enjoyment and understanding of the program. This website is dedicated to all forms of captioning, from foreign language to photo captioning. If you're curious about this often ignored world, read on for more information.

Captioning has been in use for hundreds and even thousands of years as a way of attaching extra meaning to an image using text. Paintings, photos, and even some ancient cave drawings have incorporated captions because the artist would not always be on hand to explain his or her composition to the admirer. Captions are still used to this day to attach extra information on a picture or video's length, rating, file type, artist, date created, etc when uploaded to the internet.

Did you know that the first movies had only captions? It's true! The earliest moving pictures were silent films, as filmmakers had not yet learned to record sound and images simultaneously. Consequently they used text to convey essential information on setting, dialogue, and time passage to the viewer when it could not be conveyed through images. Music would be added by a live orchestra or not at all. Filmmakers still occasionally use captions in film, but dialogue and narration are generally done in audio.

The deaf and hard of hearing as well as people who do not speak the language cannot understand the audio track of a video, however, and captioning is used to translate the audio into a form they can understand, including sound effects. In a television show, captioning is closed, meaning it must be activated by the viewer on his or her TV. In a film, because many people are watching the same screen, captioning must be open and visible to all, which means special showings are required.

Have you ever wondered where captions come from? When you turn on the captioning on your TV, a scroll appears. Who has made it? With most programs, captioning is done by translators before the program is sent to the network to be broadcast. With live shows, however, translators are often working on the spot typing out the audio, with only a few seconds of delay between the occurrence and the broadcast.

If you would like to learn more about open captioning, closed captioning, film and TV captions, foreign language captioning, translation, or issues that affect the deaf or hard of hearing, please browse through our extensive store of articles.