Television captioning strategies. A systematic research and development approach

This paper summarizes a research effort designed to determine effective television captioning strategies for hearing-impaired youngsters, ages 9-18 years. Four studies were conducted to answer the following questions: (a) Is the multilevel linguistic approach to captioning effective? (b) What is the optimal presentation rate for captions? (c) Do the caption rate and the caption density of a television program influence comprehension? (d) Does syn-capping (replacing the audio to conform to edited captions) facilitate comprehension of a captioned television program? The specific studies are summarized, and the major findings with regard to caption language level, rate, synchronous captioning, and reading ability of the viewers are presented. Implications for captioning specialists and educators are explored.