Closed-captioned television has long been used with students who are hearing-impaired. New research and improved access to the technology promises to accelerate the use of captioned television in many classrooms.
Closed captions translate the soundtrack of video programs into written words that appear on the bottom of the television screen. The caption is embedded in the video signal, so videotaped recordings made of closed-captioned television programs are also closed captioned, although you need a decoding device to view them.
Older televisions require an external decoder (available through J.C. Penney catalog service). With the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, all television sets 13 inches or larger sold after 1993 must be equipped with built-in decoders.
If an external decoder is required, the National Captioning Institute recommends the Telecaption 4000 decoder, a small box-like device with remote control that connects to a TV set or VCR to "read" the electronically encoded captions. Decoders come with one or two channels, since some series may be captioned in two languages.
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