Breaking Our Mission Down

Black and white GIF: Our Mission with NCI Logo. Above a colorful world with kawaii face bounces.

Beginning with our inception in 1979, NCI has worked tirelessly and passionately to continuously fulfill our mission of providing support services to those who are limited in their ability to participate fully in the world of auditory or visual communications.

However, you may ask what does that look like? How does a non-profit mission actualize on a day-to-day basis? Let’s break it down!

Our Mission

You might have seen our mission statement around: National Captioning Institute is a nonprofit corporation whose primary purposes are to deliver effective captioning services and encourage, develop and fund the continuing development of captioning, subtitling and other media access services for the benefit of people who require additional access to auditory and visual information. As its resources permit and opportunities unfold with the development of new technology, NCI will support services to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and others who, for whatever reason, wherever situated and irrespective of their economic conditions, are limited in their ability to participate fully in the world of auditory or visual communications.

Providing Accessibility is Our Priority

You might think closed captioning is how we serve accessibility. While that is true — we are, after all, The National Captioning Institute! — our reach and focus goes far beyond. As technology shifts, so do we:

  • Audio Description provides equal access to television, recorded video, and film programming for people who are blind or have low vision.

  • Translation options ensure all demographics are able to read captions, subtitles, and more.

  • Caption Integration allows online meetings, webcasts, webinars are for all.

  • ASR, also known as Automated Captioning, provides high-quality accessible content to a wide-variety of budgets, effectively allowing any company or organization to participate.

It’s Not Only About the Services

  • It is also about our partnerships with companies like Frameweld (Recapd), and Caption Group (CG) to take advantage of others’ strengths and skills to provide our clients the most comprehensive options.

  • Various members of our senior level team volunteer on FCC Boards, helping craft public policy that directly benefit our viewers.

  • We attend conferences, panels, and speaking engagements to ensure the needs of our viewer communities are both known and met.

We Lead With Passion

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It’s a fluid undertaking. The National Captioning Institute does not accept the status quo and settle with technology that performed well when we began 40 years ago but doesn’t serve us currently. We have always been on the forefront of technology, research, and captioning solutions. Our expectations are high because everyone deserves to live in an accessible world. We love what we do and hope our passion shows through the quality of work we provide and services we offer.




Lorri Hatfield