The Hear Daily

As I increasingly turn online for news and entertainment, I am so grateful for those publishers whom make their video content available with captioning.  One such company is Harpo Productions, Oprah’s empire.  Earlier this year, several million viewers participated in Oprah’s webcast with Eckhart Tolle “A New Earth.”  Although the live event did not include captioning, the archived videos did:  all ten of the hour and a half classes.    I was thrilled.   As the series was expanded to include other authors and thinkers, some of their content was also captioned.

Harpo has set a wonderful precedent for including captioning with their online content, but there’s still a way to go.  During a half-hour perusal of her site, I found several videos without captioning, right along side several videos with it.  Either way, I want to thank Oprah and her staff for including captioning in some of her efforts and encourage her to make it a regular part of posting video content on the web.

Here is what I wrote: Read the rest

One side effect of having hearing loss is the tendency to turn things up, way up, so we can hear them. Normal sounds that we don’t control, like a dog barking or a truck passing us on the highway are loud to others, but may be not too loud to us. But, increasing the volume and ignoring loud sounds is not good for our already embattled ears. Being hearing impaired means we have to be extra concerned about protecting the capability we have left. Here’s a list of things to do:

1. Make ear plugs a new accessory and a basic part of your wardrobe, like socks or sun protection. Stash them all over your house, your car, your work. Wear them while mowing the lawn or practicing at the shooting range or snow mobiling or at a concert or…you get the picture.

2. Use keep your windows rolled up while on the highway, or if you love the wind blowing through your hair, wear ear plugs! 70 mph passing tractor trailers are seriously loud.

Read the rest

Editor Notes: Sorry, had to remove the playback…
AOL and CNN have a few news videos that offer closed captioning.  Strangely enough, CNN.com doesn’t have caption options on any of its videos and I was unable to find any other news feeds with the CC box on AOL.  

You know what to do:  Go to AOL’s support central, click on Rate This Site, and tell them:

I love closed captioned videos!  Please expand this feature from a few CNN videos to all your video content.  I thank you and so do the other 31 million hard-of-hearing people in the US.   Thank you, AOL!

You’ll need an AOL account to do so, but it’s free.

Let me know how it goes!