Reading what their Saying

For the hearing impaired social networking sites such as youtube or myface can be especially challenging in understanding the content of these sites.

Any website that relies on audio for its sole medium of expression is essentially blocking out a portion of the potential audience. Until recently the Internet was a visual content medium, pictures and text dominated the content which made the Internet accessible to almost everybody.

The advances in technology both in hardware and software has opened up new forms of communication that was not readily available to the general Internet public. Inexpensive web cameras coupled with easy to use software as allowed anyone with access to the Internet to be come a movie producer and the result was a more personal use of the Internet for communication among its' users.

How the hearing impaired were going to have equal access to this form of communication was assisted by using captions or subtitles. The use of captions or subtitles is nothing new they have been used in foreign language films for years as well as on television broadcasts so the transition to web accessibility through captions was simple as it was obvious. Now a viewer of a media site that has sound can be part of the experience without being able to hear what is being said.

This enhancement of content can be useful to viewers who are just having a hard time understanding what is being said or performed because of the environment in which the event was being recorded in.