Banjo's World has a captioned vlog about the problems with HDMI and captioning. Even though Banjo explains it in layman's terms, I don't fully understand it. However, the bottom line is clear - if you are deaf and buy a HDTV, the captions may not work! Of course this is not fair, and given that analog television is going away completely by February 2009, it is even more unfair! (I have yet to buy a HDTV myself. You better believe that if the captions don't work after I buy a HDTV, I'm going to give certain companies and federal agencies hell).

More major network channels are setting up video players on their sites..and the good news is, the players show captions! More and more captioned programming is now available through Fox.com (read the review at Disabled in the Digital Age) and others. Plus there is a new online tv broadcaster, Hulu.com, that makes some captioned programming available.

As great as this is, there are still networks that don't provide online captioned programming. Ironically, one of them is the Disney channel. Disney makes full length episodes of popular shows like Hannah Montana available for online viewing, but there are no captions (at least there weren't as of May 2008).

This is a good start. Part of me wonders if the networks are rushing to provide at least some captioned programming in hopes of avoiding government requirements to provide captions on the internet? After all, because the law that requires captions on television does not apply to the internet, there is now pushing to get a new, updated law that will apply to the internet.

The Hearing Mojo blog reports that AOL, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are teaming up to increase web captioning. About time...but they should have planned for captioning at the very beginning of their web video efforts..not going live at all until they had captioning incorporated. More on the Hearing Mojo blog.

Blinx.com is a new web video search engine that has a captioned category: http://www.blinkx.com/videos/captioned
Another one, which doesn't seem to have a captioned category, lets you search on captioned:
http://ovguide.com/

The Proud Geek blog has been reporting on additional methods for getting captions on your web videos. Thus far, he has posted about Jumpcut and Windows Movie Maker.

I hope Harkle.com can keep up. There are four options I have learned about this year for web video captioning:

1. Project ReadOn - lets you submit a video and request captions. http://www.projectreadon.com.
2. BubblePly - lets you make your own "captions" and is not the same thing as professional captioning. http://www.bubbleply.com. The folks behind BubblePly are also working on a similar function for subtitling.
3. DotSub - Subtitling in multiple languages, including English. Videos are posted online for viewing at DotSub.
4. Veotag - Similar to BubblePly and DotSub. Add text to a video. Videos are posted online at Veotag.
   

Now if only Google Video would add a search option for "captioned" or "subtitled." Until they do, you can search video.google.com using "captioned OR subtitled."

2007 has barely started, and already deaf bloggers are expressing concerns about the failure of technology/media companies (e.g. Apple, Netflix) to consider the needs of the deaf when developing new products and services:

• Noelle Perse (January 19, 2007)
• Sonny James (January 18, 2007)
• Michael Markman (January 17, 2007)