I was so impressed with Shanna's, aka Lipreading Mom's email to ESPN, that I decided to use it as template when I emailed Amazon.
Here is her email to ESPN:
Dear ESPN, ABC Sports, and ESPN.com,
As a sports fan with hearing loss, I am writing to express my concern about the lack of captions with your video streaming of live sports events. On several occasions, myself and friends with hearing loss have wanted to watch sport events on your Website, only to be unable to understand the play-by-play information due to lack of captions.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 34 million U.S. adults have hearing loss, it would be in ESPN and ABC Sports’ best interest to provide captioned streaming as a way to appeal to this large group of potential viewers. Imagine the level of support and good PR your network and site would receive if you launched captioned Internet broadcasts to appeal to this large portion of the U.S. population.
I welcome your thoughts and will be following up with you on behalf of the millions of Americans with hearing loss.
Respectfully,
Shanna, a.k.a. Lipreading Mom Sports Fan
>>> We encourage you to email your concerns to ESPN! Fill out a Complaint/Concern Form here.<<<
Here is my email to Amazon:
Dear Amazon.com and Amazon Instant Video,
As a television and movie fan with a hearing loss, I am writing to express my concern about the lack of captions with your online video streaming of current movies and television shows. On some occasions I tried to watch TV shows from Amazon Instant Video, only to be unable to comprehend the dialogue due to lack of captions. Because of this, I no longer use Amazon Instant Video. If captions were provided, I would be an avid user.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 34 million U.S. adults as deaf or hard of hearing, it would be in Amazon and Amazon Instant Video's best interest to provide captioned streaming as a way to appeal to this large group of potential viewers. Imagine the level of support and good PR your site would receive if you launched online videos with the option of closed captions to appeal to this large portion of the U.S. population!
I welcome your thoughts and will be following up with you on behalf of the millions of Americans with hearing loss.
Respectfully,
Elizabeth
>>> Contact Amazon and voice your concerns about lack of captioning: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/digital-video.html?ie=UTF8&browse_node_id=3757 <<<
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Here is her email to ESPN:
Dear ESPN, ABC Sports, and ESPN.com,
As a sports fan with hearing loss, I am writing to express my concern about the lack of captions with your video streaming of live sports events. On several occasions, myself and friends with hearing loss have wanted to watch sport events on your Website, only to be unable to understand the play-by-play information due to lack of captions.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 34 million U.S. adults have hearing loss, it would be in ESPN and ABC Sports’ best interest to provide captioned streaming as a way to appeal to this large group of potential viewers. Imagine the level of support and good PR your network and site would receive if you launched captioned Internet broadcasts to appeal to this large portion of the U.S. population.
I welcome your thoughts and will be following up with you on behalf of the millions of Americans with hearing loss.
Respectfully,
Shanna, a.k.a. Lipreading Mom Sports Fan
>>> We encourage you to email your concerns to ESPN! Fill out a Complaint/Concern Form here.<<<
Here is my email to Amazon:
Dear Amazon.com and Amazon Instant Video,
As a television and movie fan with a hearing loss, I am writing to express my concern about the lack of captions with your online video streaming of current movies and television shows. On some occasions I tried to watch TV shows from Amazon Instant Video, only to be unable to comprehend the dialogue due to lack of captions. Because of this, I no longer use Amazon Instant Video. If captions were provided, I would be an avid user.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 34 million U.S. adults as deaf or hard of hearing, it would be in Amazon and Amazon Instant Video's best interest to provide captioned streaming as a way to appeal to this large group of potential viewers. Imagine the level of support and good PR your site would receive if you launched online videos with the option of closed captions to appeal to this large portion of the U.S. population!
I welcome your thoughts and will be following up with you on behalf of the millions of Americans with hearing loss.
Respectfully,
Elizabeth
>>> Contact Amazon and voice your concerns about lack of captioning: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/digital-video.html?ie=UTF8&browse_node_id=3757 <<<
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very nice - we've mentioned this on the ccac blog today -
ReplyDeletelauren/ccacblog.wordpress.com
Thank you. Here's hoping more will get involved.
ReplyDeleteGood letter, Elizabeth.
ReplyDeleteAdvocacy includes education and providing factual information, and your communication does that very well. There's no question that Amazon and Netflix and other online video providers should embrace captioning, for accessibility as well as the search features that captioning provides for their content.
Tanya English
Realtime Transcription, Inc.
Already got a response from Amazon:
ReplyDeleteHello,
I understand you'd like to have the videos with captions.
At this time, closed captioning is not available for Amazon Instant Video. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Customer feedback like yours is very important in helping us continue to improve the experience of watching our digital videos.
I appreciate your thoughts, and I have forwarded your suggestion to the Instant Video team.
Thanks for your interest in Amazon Instant Video. We look forward to seeing you again soon.
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Response from ESPN:
ReplyDeleteDear Elizabeth,
Thank you for contacting us.
I do apologize about any inconvenience in this matter. However, closed captioning is available on some events through ESPN3, but not all programs.
We value the comments and opinions of our fans. Your comments in reference to adding closed captioning to more events on ESPN3 will be forwarded to the appropriate department for review.
For live assistance with this or any other issue, please call Customer Care at 1-888-549-3776 (ESPN) between 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. EST.
Thank you! I will send a letter to ESPN as well. I often watch games on ESPN3 (online) live, but also cannot understand any of the commentators. I also will send a letter to Comedy Central. I absolutely love The Daily Show, but do not have cable so I watch it on the comedy central website or online, where it is not captioned. Sometimes part of an episode is captioned, but even then it is incredibly inaccurate and randomly stops. This is a major network! Come on! And yes, it is captioned on TV.
ReplyDeleteThe 21st Century Communications and Video Communications Act will require online videos of previously captioned television programming to be shown with captions as well. Look for more and more providers of television programming to make captions available next year as they prepare to meet the FCC deadline (not sure when that is).
ReplyDelete