Closed Captioning ─ Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television

Television closed captioning is not generated by computers but by human beings, mainly women, who work out of their homes, transmitting real-time text as it appears on the screen. Downey (journalism and mass communication, University of Wisconsin, Madison) traces the history of these unsung heroines and those in complementary occupations of court reporting and foreign film subtitling. He reminds the reader that it is not only the deaf who benefit from this work. How often have we checked the headlines that scroll by on an airport television as we dash to a plane? Embedded closed-captioning is used as an index to the content of archived material. Chapters cover the development of closed-captioning and the technology that allowed it to happen. Downey also mentions the political activism that was necessary to make text available to everyone. His admiration for the professionals doing this work is evident on every page. An interesting insight into something most of us take for granted. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gregory J. Downey is an associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication and the School of Library & Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850–1950.