I know it's not a question that many ask, but I do and it's because I'm deaf. Ever since I heard about Barack Obama's plan for a 30 minute address on the channels next week, that question has been weighing on my mind. For many of us in the deaf community, and those outside of it who are hearing-impaired or suffer some degree of deafness, there's nothing worse than tuning in to a show or movie you really want to watch, and finding out it's not captioned.
I've tried to contact the Obama HQ by relay to ask them this question, but there's no one that picks up the phone, so I'm going to post this diary to see if my question can be answered.
The Federal Election Commission regulations do require that presidential campaigns receiving public funding have to:
(10) Agree that any television commercial prepared or distributed by the candidate or the candidate's authorized committee(s) will be prepared in a manner which ensures that the commercial contains or is accompanied by closed captioning of the oral content of the commercial to be broadcast in line 21 of the vertical blanking interval, or is capable of being viewed by deaf and hearing impaired individuals via any comparable successor technology to line 21 of the vertical blanking interval.
However, as we all know, Barack Obama doesn't receive public funding, but he has been very accomodating towards the deaf community. He has captioning on a lot of his videos here. His campaign works with Project Readon on the captioning of his videos.
John McCain has NO captioned videos at all. You can't find any captioned videos on his website, and this is ironic, considering that he used to be on the board of Gallaudet University. He resigned from the board when Jane Fernandes resigned from her post as well.
I sincerely hope that Obama's 30-minute TV address will be captioned. It'd be great to tune in and watch it. I also hope that people will read this diary, and know the answer to my question because I can't find an answer to it so far.
Accessibility is so important to the deaf community, and to me as well. If you care about this issue, please feel free to send the Obama campaign an e-mail here at this link and recommend this diary if you'd like to do so.
CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME VIDEO HERE:
UPDATE:
A kossack, Active Marine In FL, says that it will be CAPTIONED according to Chicago HQ!