White House Delaying Web Captioning?

Is the White House delaying the captioning of their web video? On February 13, Caption Action 2 received an email from someone complaining that the White House's online videos were not captioned. What is this? Caption Action 2 investigated on February 14th.

What we found:

• On WhiteHouse.gov video section: Up until February 11, the videos were captioned. After February 11, the captions stopped. Most videos between February 11 and February 13 were not captioned. On a video by video basis, in reverse chronological order:
  
  
  
  • February 13 - John Brennan, Questions on National Security: no captions, no transcript
  • February 13 - John Brennan, Speaks on National Security: no captions, no transcript
  • February 12 - Obama Weekly Address: captioned! also a transcript.
  • February 12 - Obama Addresses US-Islamic World Forum: has Arabic subtitling, but no English captions, and no transcript.
  • February 12 - Obama Message to team USA: no captions, no transcript
  • February 12 - Press Briefing: no captions, no transcript
  • February 12 - Obama Lunar New Year: no captions, no transcript
  • February 11 - Press Briefing: no captions, a transcript provided
  
  
• On YouTube, the WhiteHouse channel, in reverse chronological order:
  
  
  
  • February 14 - John Brennan Takes Questions: no captions
  • February 13 - John Brennan Speaks: no captions
  • February 12 - Obama Weekly Address: captioned!
  • February 12 - Press Briefing: no captions
  • February 12 - Lunar New Year: captioned!
  • February 11 - Press Briefing: captioned!

So what is going on here?? Section 508 requires that Federal websites be accessible. Yet it is clear that the White House is inconsistent with their captioning! Note that they did not caption the February 12 Lunar New Year video on WhiteHouse.gov, but the same video is captioned on YouTube.

Last week, something similar happened with Hulu. When the Valentine's Day episode of Modern Family was first posted on Hulu, there were no captions. Then a day or two later, it was captioned. The same thing happened earlier with an episode of Heroes.

Are we deaf and hard of hearing people SECOND CLASS citizens who must wait until captions are added to videos?! Not even the White House will postpone posting a video until captions are added?! This is totally unfair to deaf and hard of hearing people, making us wait for captions while hearing people get to see the videos right away!

We need to demand that the White House establish a policy of not posting their videos until closed captions have been added! To do otherwise means that even the White House thinks deaf and hard of hearing people are second class citizens! If hearing people have to wait, too bad -- equal access means just that, EQUAL.

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