Closed Captioning Handbook

Gary D. Robson is one of the foremost experts in the field of closed captioning. He was the 1997 recipient of the Telecommunications for the Deaf Andrew Saks Engineering Award for "outstanding contributions in improving visual accessibility to information via realtime captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans.” An author of two books and over 50 articles on captioning-including the World Book Encyclopedia entry-he also designed closed captioning software which became the standard tool for the industry. Gary is an independent captioning consultant in Montana.

• Part I: Overview of Closed CaptioningWhy Closed Captioning?A Brief History of CaptioningPart II: Captioning LawOverview of U.S. Captioning LawThe Americans with Disabilities ActThe Telecommunications Act of 1996Other FCC RulingsPart III: Captioning TechnologyWhere the Captions Live: A Line 21 OverviewEncoding, Decoding, TroubleshootingGenerating Captions in RealtimePart IV: Related TechnologiesCaptions in Internet StreamingWeb Site AccessibilityMovie Theater CaptioningLive Event CaptioningVideo Description for the BlindPart V: Captioning Around the WorldPart VII: Appendices, Glossary, and Index

"A 'biblical' tome for captioning--this book will be referenced by those in the captioning industry in the years to come. The industry owes it to Gary Robson. Honestly, without Gary, there is very little out there documenting the development of captioning, from both a historical and technical point of view." Philip W. Braven, ex-President of the National Captioning Institute and former Chairman of the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees