Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Closed Captioned for the Typing Impaired

Can anyone out there help me understand how it is - in this technologically savvy age of such things as iPhones and TiVo - that no one has come up with a way to do Closed Captioning properly?

It's all I can do not to snort out loud while I'm working out at the gym and watching the news on the big screen in front of me - of course, because there's also music playing and not everyone is watching TV, the sound is off and so those ridiculous, non-sensical words are flashing along the bottom of the screen.

Yesterday, the parents of "Missing Maddy" were described on the local news channel as well-spoken and "photo Jennic". But - though bizarre - that was minor. They later declared it the "6th 95 of September 11th". 95?! Umm, did they mean "anniversary"?

My favorite, though, was the report on the weather, in which someone had obviously attempted to write some of it in advance. The writer was supposed to fill in "Chicago" after the updated temperature, but it went up as "IT IS CURRENTLY 62 DEGREES IN NOWHERE". Perhaps they ought to just leave a blank rather than writing "nowhere"?? There were actually a couple of those.

Come on! I don't do it for a living, but I can type text messages more accurately - and faster - than that person was typing the news. How about word prediction? There just has to be a way to update that technology.

Please, on behalf of our deaf communities - and moms who only get to watch the news at the gym, for God's sake! - may someone get a handle on that soon.

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