Why Everyone Is Watching TV With Closed Captioning on These Days

Jason Kottke:

As Sebastian Greger notes in his summary of the resulting thread, closed captioning is a great example of how accessibility features can benefit everyone, especially those who may have disabilities or limitations that aren’t typically acknowledged as such.

Such a great point about accessibility. It really is for everyone.

On the closed captions front — I use Apple TV’s “what’d they just say?” feature several times every episode watching Game of Thrones. I don’t know what they do with their audio but damned if the characters don’t all sound like a bunch of mumble-mouths a lot of the time. And last night I finally watched Netflix’s The Highwaymen (it was exactly as good as I expected going in, which is to say about a B-) and I had to leave closed captions on for entire scenes. I didn’t have the volume set particularly low, I just couldn’t understand what they were saying. If it weren’t for closed captions — and the ease with which Apple TV lets one toggle them — I’d have abandoned the movie and gone to bed.

★ Friday, 26 April 2019