Dr. Malcolm Norwood was a deaf scientist and considered the “father” of closed captioning. He played a major role in the development of what has become standard availability of the service on television sets since the 1980’s. Unfortunately, the technology is far from perfect and badly in need of refinement in order to be of reliable use for those who would benefit most from it.

For those with general hearing loss, it seems obvious that, in most situations, hearing aids are the best answer to difficulties in hearing clearly, with television sound being only one instance when it is helpful. Part of the problem with television sound is in the broadcasting and/or recording of the sound itself. I have found that broadcasts originating from local stations are generally easier to understand than those recorded and rebroadcast, especially those programs originating in countries other than the United States. Unfortunately, some of my favorite programs have been recorded in other countries and I have often wondered if those recordings are lacking in compatibility with the equipment we use in broadcasting them.

Those British comedies and mysteries are characterized by muffled sound, everybody talking too fast (do they speed up the film to save time?), and the normal differences in the pronunciation of some words between British and American English. For those reasons, I turn on the CC to help me understand the dialog. Far too often there occur obvious cuts in the film showing only flashes of text too fast to read, single words that make no sense and obvious instances where episodes have been edited to fit the allotted time. What text remains seems to be fairly accurate and my complaint there is that it is hardly ever displayed for long enough to let a person read it. All this, it seems, so that what might have originally been an hour-long program is reduced to 45 minutes.

Closed Captioning generated live at local stations is often thick with errors. The most prevalent and obvious fault in immediate, simultaneous captioning is misinterpretation. Because I am not depending on CC for the facts when I watch local newscasts, I find many mistakes in interpreting what is being said. Some are misleading, some are amusing, all are confusing to any person who might have to rely on the printed words in order to keep up with the daily news. In a few instances, I’ve seen some of those errors corrected almost instantly, thus convincing me that a real person is, at least, keeping an eye on the text to guard its accuracy. Other times, the glaring errors are allowed to stand and misinform those who read it. I do know that some of the captioning is mechanical, which I assume is responsible for much of the confusion. Following are just a few examples of the results of that flawed technology;

Homophones are easy to spot but still confusing; needing a “banned age” rather than a bandage can distract you enough to lose the train of thought. And when Lawrence Welk’s “Auf wiedersehen” becomes “I’ll be the same” it causes us to smile, not puzzle over its meaning. Other such misinterpretations, however, can give false information, sometimes with serious results. I heard of a massive “single” that swallowed several cars in Thailand, and that it was probably warmer in the city of “the core” because the sun was shining in that part of Iowa. I heard a song about a small lake entitled “Dubai you” on the Lawrence Welk show. And how do you “tame a county”?

On a national news broadcast, I learned that some mechanics found “bird flu” in the engine of an airplane, and that one of the symptoms of flu was stiff “mussels “ It’s disconcerting to realize that the news and entertainment being described for the hearing impaired are entrusted to poor spellers and illiterate machines designed to turn speech into text, I seriously wonder about that phone service available to the hard-of-hearing, that “prints out what your caller is saying as they say it.” I don’t know a lot about how that works, but I do know that it’s accuracy depends partly on the diction and clarity of the person speaking, and I am skeptical about it ever being very precise.