Increasingly, online video content is becoming integral to our lives streaming shows straight to our desktops and dvrs. Unfortunately, our current legislation does not require captioning to be included in this distribution. And so, it isn’t.

In fact, captioning availability is going backwards. Recently Disney/Pixar stripped their rental dvds of captioning making this part of its “bonus features.” You only get the bonus features if you buy the dvd.  Many other movie production houses are planning on following suit.

Current legislation requires captioning technology to be available to television and telephone users. These laws need to be revised to include changing and emerging technologies including television and movies distributed over the internet as well as other reasonable outlets of video content.

Please ensure that closed captioning survives by signing this petition.

(I have only covered the entertainment portion of what this bill will do, as that is the part that effects me the most. But for people that can not communicate via telephone like I can, this bill will help in very immediate and critical ways.  Read more here.)

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!