- 1971 - A preview of closed captioning is demonstrated at The First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville
- 1972 - Closed captions is embedded within the normal broadcast of the ABC show Mod Squad at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University).
- 1972 - The French Chef becomes the first TV program to include open captioning on PBS. Later the same day a rebroadcast of ABC News includes open captions.
- 1973 - The Captioned ABC News becomes the only timely newscast accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
- 1976 - The FCC adopts standards for the transmission of closed captioning on TV and requires license holders to transmit emergency messages in a visual format.
- 1979 - The National Captioning Institute is created
- 1980 - The ABC Sunday Night Movie, The Wonderful World of Disney and Masterpiece Theater are among the first closed-captioned television series broadcast for viewers with caption decoders
- 1982 - Real-time captioning debuts
- 1990 - The Americans With Disabilities Act is passed, requiring all federally-funded public service announcements to be closed-captioned.
- 1990 - The Television Decoder Circuitry Act requires TV sets 13 inches or larger to be capable of showing captions within three years.
- 1990 - Wheel of Fortune became the first game show to be closed captioned.
- 1992 - FCC adopts technical standards for closed captioning on cablesystems.
- 1996 – The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to develop rules for closed captioning of television programs
- 2010 - By order of the FCC, 100% of all new analog and digital Spanish languageprograms must be closed-captioned
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Closed-captioning Milestones
Closed captions are called “closed” because video viewers can decide whether to turn them on or off. On the other hand, open captions are visible at all times.
