closed captioning is not subtitling

the difference between closed captioning and subtitling is that subtitles contain only dialogue, without sound effects notations or identification of the speaker.

for a complete description of how television programs are closed captioned, there are several people who are far more knowledgeable than I am.

gary robson has a great closed captioning FAQ page on his thorough and complete website. he is a stenocaptioner who specializes in real-time captioning. real-time is done when a live program (news or sports) is captioned. this is far more difficult to do than offline captioning, when a captioner encodes a program that already exists on film, tape or dvd.

joe clark seems to be the canadian guru on closed captioning and has written extensively on the subject. his website is also very informative, and includes reviews of the in-theatre closed captions on current movies. he is also a powerful advocate of accessibility.

OTHER LINKS
WGBH

VITAC

NCICAP

CAPTIONMAX

CAPTIONS, INC.

CANADIAN SERVICES:
LINE 21 MEDIA SERVICES

The FCC site on Closed Captioning