Dealing with inaccessible business practices: Netflix

Out of 10,000 movies and more than 20,000 TV programs which Netflix streams online, the company has made only 300 available with captions.  Yet just yesterday, Netflix announced that it would be charging deaf and hard of hearing people a deaf tax in order to continue to use its DVDs, while people with normal hearing would be given a whopping discount to use only streaming videos at $7.99 a month.  Netflix really, really likes people who have normal hearing.

What?  Did the company really say all that?  Of course not---but it might as well have.  Its new pay structure discriminates against deaf and hard of hearing people, who would have to pay more to use the DVD service while continuing to subsidize the streaming videos they can't use because Netflix has been so slow to caption them---or even make it possible to do a search for the few that are captioned.

Yet virtually all new DVDs and TV programs have captions or subtitles.   Why hasn't Netflix figured out how to repurpose the captions and subtitles from DVDs more quickly for online streaming?  Hulu.com does this with a very short turn around period without even charging viewers.  Netflix has dragged its feet about doing this even when it's raking in millions of dollars from its subscribers.  The problem seems to be one of attitude and will, not resources. 

The technology's clearly available.  YouTube can automatically synchronize a caption file with the audio in videos that are uploaded to its web site, and does this for free for all videos uploaded to the web site (if the option to do so is turned on).  Although Netflix would probably have to pay Google, the owner of YouTube, to use that technology, doing so would pay off in making the streaming videos accessible to 36 million people with hearing loss and millions more who use captions because they're not native speakers of English, have auditory processing disorders, or other reasons.  There's a huge market out there for captioned content, but the company seems to have made hugely erroneous assumptions about the large need for captioning.  An investment of a couple of hundreds of dollars in reformatting the already provided captioning for each movie would allow thousands and thousands more subscribers to watch those movies.

Deaf and hard of hearing subscribers had been putting up with this inequity because the DVDs were accessible to them and there was no added cost to them for using the DVDs, even though they were not getting the same level of service that all other customers were. But now?

Read this copy of the email that Netflix sent out to a subscriber of the unlimited plan announcing its price increase:

We want to let you know about two important changes to the Netflix service.

1.  The price of your current plan is changing from $16.99 a month to $19.99 a month. This new price will be effective with your next billing statement on or after January 2, 2011, and will be referenced in your Membership Detail. With your current plan you can both instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies on your computer or TV and receive unlimited DVDs by mail.

2.  We now also offer a new $7.99 a month plan which lets you instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies on your computer or TV.  This plan does not include any DVDs. All the titles you can watch instantly on your current plan are also available on this new plan, and as a reminder, not all titles on DVD are available to watch instantly. This new plan is available immediately – if you'd like to switch to this new plan at any time, simply visit Your Account.

Why the changes? Our selection of TV episodes and movies available to stream has grown dramatically, and as a result most members want us to deliver unlimited movies and TV episodes two ways: streaming instantly over the internet plus DVDs by mail. The price change will allow us to continue to offer the popular plan choice of unlimited TV episodes and movies streaming instantly along with unlimited DVDs. The new plan, which does not include DVDs, is a great option for the increasing number of members who only want to watch instantly. The $7.99 a month price reflects no DVD shipping costs on this plan.

We hope you're enjoying great TV shows and movies from Netflix, and that you'll continue to enjoy Netflix on whichever plan you choose. We realize you have lots of home entertainment options, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have any questions, please call us at 1-800-715-2146.

–The Netflix Team

My suggestion:

Stop rewarding with your dollars a company that is knowingly disregarding the caption needs of deaf and hard of hearing people.  Remember, it doesn't even make it possible to do a search for captioned streaming videos.  You have other options for entertainment (discussed below).

Tell the company that it needs to do four things:

a)  Offer a DVD-only plan for people who cannot use uncaptioned streaming video (which will include deaf and hard of hearing people)

b)  Provide an online search engine that allows people to find captioned or subtitled videos on the Netflix web site

c)  Hire fresh new talent who are motivated and dedicated to providing captioning for DVDs as quickly as possible.

d)  Let you know when it substantially improves the accessibility of its services for deaf and hard of hearing people so that you can become a customer of Netflix again

What are your other entertainment options?

1) Hulu offers many captioned TV programs and some  movies.  Search for captioned media by going to the "Recently Added" or "Most Popular" page and click on the CC box.

2) Many local libraries loan out DVDs, which you may be able to reserve online

3) For new releases, you can reserve DVDs online from Redbox, which has kiosks at 7-11, Lucky's and other places.  For more info, see:

http://www.redbox.com/HowItWorks.aspx

(I have not used this service myself.)

If you know of other options that offer access to captioned entertainment, please leave a comment.

I believe we need to reward companies that do try to provide access, and to pull our business from companies that don't. Let me know what you think!  If you spot any errors in this, please let me know that as well.


Late Additions:

The Netflix CEO blogged more than a year ago about  Netflix's technical reasons for not providing captioning:
http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitles.html

Comments made to Access Board on May 12, 2010

On May 12, the United States Access Board held a public hearing on "its proposed refresh of requirements for information and communication technologies (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act." I spoke at this hearing on some of the accessibility needs of hard of hearing people which did not appear to have been adequately addressed. As we had only three to five minutes to speak, my comments were streamlined. The gist of them is provided below. Sentences that are italicized below were not spoken out loud.

My name is Dana Mulvany, and I'm speaking here today as a consumer advocate who is hard of hearing; I also work as a consultant specializing in hearing loss issues. My comments today are focused primarily on the needs of people who are hard of hearing, of which there are more than 30 million in the U.S.A.

What I'll be doing here this morning is providing some information about the needs of people with hearing loss along with numbered technical points that I would like the Access Board to take into consideration.

• A. Most hard of hearing people have much stronger hearing in the low frequencies compared to their ability to hear high frequencies. Many hard of hearing people cannot hear high frequency sounds at all.
  
  
• 1. This means that alerting sounds for the general public should be required to contain multiple frequencies, especially low frequency sounds, and should not use just high frequency sounds.
  
  
• 2. There needs to be a required option to customize alerting sounds for the need of the individual user with respect to the frequencies used by the alerting sound, not just the loudness level. (This will also help people with normal hearing in environments with substantial noise because due to the phenomenon of "upward spread of masking," low frequency sounds mask, or cover up, high frequency sounds.)
  
  
• B. In order to decipher speech at their highest level possible, many hard of hearing people need high fidelity reproduction of speech across all speech frequencies with as little noise as possible.
  
  
• 3. This means that all audio components need to be capable of high fidelity reception, transmission and generation of speech for maximum speech comprehension. These include microphones and telephone hardware used by people who do not have a disability themselves but who would communicate with hard of hearing employees and/or members of the public.
  
  
• 4. Telephone and VoIP services also need to transmit high fidelity audio to the maximum extent possible. (Unfortunately, many cell phone carriers are choosing not to transmit the lower frequency part of the speech spectrum in order to conserve bandwidth, and this is having a highly adverse effect on the speech comprehension of hard of hearing people.) I thus endorse the Access Board's effort to address Audio Clarity for Interconnected VoIP.
  
  
• 5. It would indeed be very helpful if the Board would require that any auditory features, where provided, include at least one mode of operation that improves clarity, reduces background noise, or allows control of volume, in addition to adding the other features I mention today. (This is my answer to Question 13.)
  
  
• C. Because of uneven hearing loss in both ears, including single-sided deafness, many hard of hearing people need all the audio delivered either to one ear or both ears. In other words,
  
  
• 6. Manufacturers need to provide an option to switch stereo sound to mono. (Apple has already been doing this for certain models of the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS.)
  
  
• 7. It is often important to be able to use both ears to hear, not just one ear, because each ear may hear very differently. Whenever possible, the ability to hear with both ears should be provided.
  
  
• D. Speech comprehension for hard of hearing people can increase enormously by being able to speechread and hear at the same time. For many people with severe hearing loss, speechreading provides information about consonants that they might not otherwise hear.
  
  
• 8. Video communication technology therefore needs to support the simultaneous transmission of speechreading and audio at the same time for hard of hearing people. The technology should also support the provision of text from relay services directly on the video.
  
  
• E. The majority of people with hearing loss do not use hearing aids.
  
  
• 9. It would be highly desirable for communication equipment to provide customization of the frequencies in the audio signal. Apple has done this for music by providing an equalizer function on some of their iPhones and iPods. It would thus appear to be technically feasible for manufacturers to provide the same function for all audio emanating from their products.
  
  
• F. Captioning is very important to people with significant hearing loss. Unfortunately, many people have significant trouble figuring out how to turn it on and may not even realize it is available.
  
  
• 10. Controls for turning on and customizing captioning need to be as easy to use as possible.

Thank you for your attention to these important issues.

(End of written comments)

I plan to provide more complete comments, which are due to the Access Board by June 21st, 2010, and encourage other people to do so as well. Here are some of the related documents from the Access Board:

http://www.access-board.gov/news/ict-hearing.htm

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/notice.htm

Feel free to provide some feedback or questions here about what I myself said.

[Note:  The due date for comments was corrected from June 12th to June 21st.] 

How to see automated captioning for new YouTube videos

As I hope most everyone knows, YouTube recently started providing automated transcription/captioning for all new videos uploaded to YouTube. If you missed the announcement, here's an article about it:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/youtube-launches-auto-captions-for-all-videos/

I just did a search for a new YouTube video to doublecheck how to make the captions appear. It turns out that there are a couple of steps to take to show the automated captioning, and that merely seeing the "CC" with a red background on the bottom of the video doesn't indicate you will see captions now.

For example, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZLvFrl6qk&feature=aso

Click on the "CC" on the bottom part of the video and wait for the menu to pop up.

Click on "Transcribe Audio (Beta)" at the top. This turns on the automated transcription/captioning which is done for new videos. (Most older videos won't have that feature enabled yet.)

After activating the automated captioning, one can then choose to change the caption settings (the font and the size of the captions) and one's account settings. (If you don't yet have an account on YouTube, it's helpful to set one up so you can set captioning preferences, save your favorites, create playlists, etc.). I just changed my own YouTube account settings so that automatic captioning is always activated.

The captioning is pretty cool!

Note that the automated captioning will invariably have errors in it if the owner of the video hasn't corrected it. Some of the captioning will probably be funny when it hasn't been corrected yet. Let me know of any really funny ones you see!

Dana

Making Outdoor Movies Accessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

Recently, my homeowner's association announced it would be showing an outdoor movie, "Kung Fu Panda."   I emailed the activity director:

"Will the movie be shown with subtitles?  Subtitles would make the movie accessible to people with hearing loss, of which I'm one. Subtitles are also very useful for children still expanding their vocabularies, as well as for people who aren't native speakers of English.

"(The City of Rockville shows subtitles when they show movies downtown.)"

Here's the answer I received: 

"No I'm sorry. The vendor we are using is on a much smaller scale than the City of Rocvkille and we do not have the capablitiy to show subtitles via his equipment."

When I thought about this answer, I realized it didn't make sense to me.  I realized that both people might be confused about the difference between a DVD's closed captions and the English subtitles or SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing).  Many people use "captions" and "subtitles" interchangeably, but they're not at all the same.  

Here's an edited (improved) version of what I wrote back:

"You or he might be confused about the difference between closed captions and English subtitles.  While closed captions would require special technology in order to be shown, English subtitles on DVDs are normally very easy to turn on.

"If he is using a DVD player, he should have a DVD player that is capable of showing English subtitles.  (I would expect he is not using a film projector.)

"I have a DVD player myself that I got from Walmart for less than $40 which can show subtitles. Most DVD players have this capability.  This vendor probably does have a player that can show English subtitles (and if not, it would be cheap for him to upgrade to one; he could even borrow mine)."

The upshot was that the vendor did have a DVD player that could show subtitles, he used that player, the English subtitles were turned on, and I enjoyed being able to see the movie along with a lot of other people from my homeowner's association.  (It was fun to see the children interacting with their parents!)  I later heard from another audience member that he and his wife, who were both non-native speakers of English, really enjoyed seeing the movie with subtitles, and their young children also benefited from being able to read what was said.  I think probably quite a lot of people enjoyed the subtitles there.

My impression so far is that most new DVDs made by members of the MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) are probably going to have subtitles in English.  Years ago, the MPAA had voluntarily agreed to provide closed-captioning on all of their DVDs.  Perhaps because HDMI cables don't transmit closed caption data, the members of the MPAA generally seem to be providing English subtitles on Blu-Ray disks and on most other new DVDs, though they're still usually providing closed captions on the non-Blu-Ray DVDs.

The landscape about providing access to outdoor summertime movies has thus changed a great deal.  Now it's going to be much easier to provide access for deaf and hard of hearing people (and non-native speakers of English and young readers with limited vocabularies) when fairly new movies are being shown.

Older DVDs that have closed captions and no English subtitles will be a bit more difficult to make accessible, however, but it's still possible to show closed captions from DVDs via projectors:

1. More and more projectors are being released on the market that do have the capability of decoding NTSC (analog) captions from external devices, including DVD players.  (It may be confusing to learn that a digital video disc (DVD) uses "analog" NTSC captions, but that is because the captions were originally designed to be decoded by analog (NTSC) TVs, and the caption format remains the same.)   In my opinion, all schools, libraries, government agencies and audiovisual engineers should consider making sure that new projectors they buy have the capability of decoding NTSC captions via the S-video and composite video inputs (and preferably, the component video input as well, though upconversion and progressive scanning would need to be turned off on the DVD player for the captions to be decoded via that input).  
   
   
2. A makeshift solution for displaying captions from a DVD is to use a powerful enough laptop computer that is capable of displaying a DVD via a projector and which has a DVD software program installed that can decode captions from the DVD.  (The free Windows Media Player software has the capability of decoding captions from DVDs, as do many other DVD programs.) Not all laptop computers have the capability of displaying a DVD on an external monitor or projector, however, and at this time, I don't know what technical specifications a computer has to have in order to display a DVD on an external device.  (If you know the answer to this, please share!)
   
   
3. Some DVD-recorders that have an ATSC tuner AND an NTSC tuner *may* be able to decode the captions from a DVD as well.  The Panasonic DVD recorders starting with the letters DMR appear to have this capability (*all* of the video output seems designed to pass through the internal caption decoder).  There are other DVD recorders with tuners that handle captions differently and which do not decode the captions from the DVDs (only the video input from television may be decoded, while the video output from DVDs is not necessarily designed to pass through the caption decoder).   If you know of other brands of DVD recorders that will decode captions from the DVDs, please provide the make and model number in a comment on this blog.
   
   
4. Perhaps in the future, there will be some stand-alone DVD players developed that have the ability to decode captions.  At the present time, there's no requirement for them to do so. There's legislation proposed by the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technologies that would require such devices to have built-in decoding of captions.  In the past, the cost of decoder chips had been estimated as being less than $2; I imagine it's less than 50 cents now. If you'd like to support COAT's legislative efforts, check out their web site at http://www.coataccess.org/.
   

I hope this information provided here will help many more deaf and hard of hearing people enjoy outdoor movies this summer!    If you're having trouble getting access to an outdoor movie, you can ask the people showing the movie to go to this particular blog so that they can learn for themselves what they need to do.  

Enjoy the movies!

Dana

Information from volunteers

Here's an interesting article about how technology was used to communicate information about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/first-hand-acco.html

It's very interesting that Wikipedia was used to provide frequently updated information about these attacks. Wikipedia allows numerous volunteers to collaborate on entries, so the potential to collect useful information quickly could be almost unlimited.

The downside of using volunteers, however, is that they may inadvertently help provide useful, real-time information to the terrorists themselves. Wired also has an article about how the terrorists used different gadgets to see how the world was responding to them and changed what they were doing:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/the-gagdets-of.html

I think that the websites of large local newspapers will still be the best place to look for (scrutinized) information from local residents, though unfortunately, not all may be set up to do that. (The Marin Independent Journal, for example, didn't do that during such calamities as the massive oil spill last year, though the San Francisco Chronicle did.) Web sites of television stations unfortunately tend to use uncaptioned videos without transcripts, so they're not as helpful at communicating accessible emergency information on their web sites for people with hearing loss or people who aren't native speakers of English.

Local emergency notification systems

I've personally found very useful the emergency email alerting systems that were implemented by the City of Rockville and Montgomery County, MD. Both governments contracted with RoamSecure to provide emergency email alerts about local emergencies and severe traffic alerts to subscribers via user-selected email, cell phone and pager addresses. The service is free for any subscriber, although cell phone and pager networks may charge a fee for each message received from the service. I've received a variety of different messages using this service, such as warnings about potential tornadoes and ice storms, and severe traffic alerts.

Today I visited the RoamSecure.com website, looked at their list of customers, and to my surprise, found that it's also apparently up and running in San Francisco and San Mateo. I had been pestering San Francisco and Marin County (where Sausalito is) to use an emergency email alerting system. Marin County is listed as a customer but doesn't appear to have their system operative yet. I signed up for the SF system since I play volleyball in the city and Sausalito is so close to it that I'll want to know about disasters there anyway.

I looked for information about how deaf and hard of hearing people in San Diego might have gotten notified about needing to evacuate. The City of San Diego implemented a new reverse 911 system recently, and apparently, everyone with special needs in the city should have registered on it to communicate what their needs were, but the web site did not provide specific guidance about how to elaborate on this. Reverse 911 can be a real problem for hard of hearing people, most of whom don't have TTYs, as they can have great trouble understanding rapidly recorded messages and not even have a clue what the call is about. The voice of the person calling needs to be very, very clear, but too often people sound strained and rushed, and if there's no option to repeat the message, it can be completely unintelligible to hard of hearing people. With respect to the sign-up page, I personally would have preferred knowing whether I had the option to receive text messages to my cell phone and email accounts in addition to a phone call (a phone call would actually be more effective at waking me up than my cell phone would be since the cell phone can't generate a loud enough low frequency ring for me, and if I could hear the call was about an emergency, I could check my cell phone, email, and local television station).

Since the San Diego Reverse 911 sign-up web page asked for email addresses, personnel might have followed up on all the special needs, but I wouldn't have a lot of confidence in their follow-through. Rather, there should have been a built-in option for email alerts, an option to check whether the phone was a TTY or a single-line CapTel or VCO phone (which need to be called through a special toll-free number), and an option for special communication, like clear speech from a person with low-pitched speech or Spanish, Chinese, or another language. (With so many immigrants in San Diego, it was especially important to be sensitive to the need for communication in Spanish.) It doesn't appear to me that the city or the company who created this sign up page consulted with people expert in hearing loss and language needs.

The flaws of the San Diego sign-up page can be seen at:
http://www.sandiego.gov/ohs/reverse911/index.shtml

I looked for more information and found an article criticizing the city's purchase of this reverse 911 system compared to San Diego County's Internet-based mass notification system, which is supposed to provide a variety of different alerts:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070923/news_1m23reverse.html

Unfortunately, I couldn't find out any sign-up information for this system, even at:
http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/

(However, that web site contains a lot of useful links that could be very helpful to evacuees.)

I've heard that the Reverse 911 system in San Diego didn't apparently appropriately notify deaf people there; it's not clear whether this is because they hadn't signed up for the new system or their information hadn't been processed yet, or because there was no email notification system in place yet. I'd love to hear from any deaf or hard of hearing San Diegans about their experience with the reverse 911 system there (which is required by the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to be accessible to people with disabilities).

Still another resource is the Emergency Email Network at:
http://www.emergencyemail.org/

I've used this resource for years, but many local emergency management agencies don't send information to it, so it doesn't necessarily provide information about local, non-weather emergencies. It does tend to send weather information and other large area notices, though.

For more information about other vendors of emergency notification technology, see the following directory from Gallaudet University's Technology Assistance Program 's 2005 conference:

http://tap.gallaudet.edu/Emergency/Nov05Conference/EmergencyReports/directory.pdf

Snapshot of KPBS Google Map

Thought I'd show a picture of the Google Map created by KPBS.org as it will probably disappear at some point. I like their selection of icons and their shaded areas showing the estimated burn area and evacuation areas; they also provide a great deal more information when you click on the icons (which you can only do on the actual interactive map, not on the picture above). The interactive map designed by KPBS can currently be seen via the "Interactive Map" featured on the left side of the page at http://www.kpbs.org/fires