NEWSrelease

News from the National Captioning Institute, Inc.

Date: April 15, 2003

Contact: Jay Feinberg

703-917-7600 (V/TTY)

703-917-9853 (FAX)

jfeinberg@ncicap.org

NCI Provides Real-Time Spanish Captioning
For War Coverage on CNN en Español

Washington, DC – The National Captioning Institute (NCI), the global captioning leader headquartered in Vienna, VA, announces that for the first time, real-time Spanish captions were provided for emergency broadcast coverage. NCI provided real-time Spanish captioning for the war coverage in Iraq on CNN en Español.

NCI partnered with CNN en Español to broadcast real-time Spanish captions to make live news reports concerning the war efforts in Iraq accessible for people who are native speakers of the Spanish language and are deaf or hard of hearing. NCI began providing real-time Spanish captions on March 20, 2003 at 12:00 a.m. and continued live captioning for 24 hours straight and then 18 hours per day for six more days. Funding for captioning was provided by grants from the U.S. Department of Education for captioning Spanish-language programming.

“NCI is excited to partner with CNN en Español to provide real-time Spanish captions for its informative and educational news programming,” stated Jack Gates, NCI President and COO. “This partnership has enabled the network to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of military action in Iraq while meeting the diverse needs of a growing U.S. Hispanic population by making their news services accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing and speak Spanish as their primary language.”

The U.S. Hispanic population, estimated at nearly 35 million, is expected to continue to grow in coming years. In an effort to meet the increasing need for live Spanish captions, NCI’s seasoned staff developed and successfully implemented its first Spanish real-time captioning system in 2001.

The system enables NCI captioners to transcribe spoken Spanish into phonetic code while maintaining proper spelling and grammar. A computer program, developed as part of the system, then converts the phonetic code into readable Spanish captions. Captions are displayed in upper and lower case characters with appropriate accents for optimal readability.

FCC regulations are now requiring networks and programming distributors to meet new Spanish-language captioning requirements. These requirements include a minimum of 450 Spanish caption hours every quarter between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2003. By 2010, 100% of all new programs are required to provide Spanish captions.

With offices in the Washington, DC metropolitan area; Burbank, CA; New York, NY; Dallas, TX; and London, England, the nonprofit National Captioning Institute is the global captioning leader, supplying the highest-quality closed captioning, subtitling, description and related services for broadcast and cable television, home video and DVD, and government and corporate video programming.

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Editor’s note: U.S. Department of Education grants provide 100% of funding for the captioning on CNN en Español. One grant for $600,000 was awarded in 1999 and another grant for $345,000 was awarded in 2002.

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