Celebrating 35 years of the ADA: A closer look at the role of captioning

July 26th marked the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the first comprehensive civil rights legislation addressing and granting basic accessibility needs for people with disabilities.

The act dramatically changed – and improved – the social and political landscape of the United States and greatly advanced the rights of people with disabilities. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that some of the rights and benefits that we now take for granted didn’t exist or were difficult to come by a little more than three decades ago.

Among other things, the ADA ensures fair employment practices and equal access to jobs, physical access to all public and many private spaces, accessible communications, adequate housing and accessible public transportation.

Without the ADA, even something as simple as curb cuts at street crossings and ramps at entryways for wheelchair users might not exist. And, now, because of it, individuals of all abilities benefit from them, whether they’re pushing strollers or carts or have difficulty navigating steps.

The same holds true with captions. While the ADA didn’t specifically address captioning for television, the law helped shine a light on the need for communications accessibility and telecommunications equality. As a result, millions of people, in addition to those who rely on it, now benefit from closed captioning including early readers, English Language Learners and anyone trying to watch television or videos in a noisy environment.

For the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, the few laws in place prior to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act were limited in scope and required equal communication access mainly for entities that received federal funding. The ADA went a long way to expanding the number and types of places that are required to provide accessible communications, whether it be through captioning, assistive listening systems and devices, sign language interpretation, telephone handset amplifiers, text telephones or simple written materials.

Captions move forward

Captions already had been around for a number of years before the signing of the ADA.

Though captioning is largely associated with television, early efforts in films initially paved the way. Silent films that used title cards to describe action or convey dialogue were one of the earliest iterations of subtitles.

Once sound made its way into movies, title cards fell by the wayside. However, an impression was made and words on the screen (subtitles) became a common way to make international language films appeal to broader audiences.

In the 1950s, there was a concerted push for captions in films/educational videos to make entertainment accessible to deaf audiences, but in terms of television, captions were first introduced to viewing audiences in the early 1970s.

In 1972, captions first appeared on “The French Chef” with Julia Child. The program displayed open captions, meaning the captions were visible to all viewers and could not be turned off.

It would not be until 1980 that closed captioning, which viewers could turn on and off, were introduced on a regular schedule to American television. In fact, this past March marked the 45th anniversary of closed captions on television when broadcasters ABC, NBC and PBS debuted closed-captioned shows starting with “The ABC Sunday Night Movie,” “The Wonderful World of Disney” and “Masterpiece Theatre.”

Up to this point, these were all post-production captions – meaning they were added to a show after it was recorded. Live or real-time captions would be introduced in 1982 with the Academy Awards, captioned on-site by a steno captioner.

Caption and access rules advance

Captioning rules and regulations also have expanded over the years, reinforcing the need and absolute right of equal access to television for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. Below are just a few of the milestones in the captioning industry realized after the passage of the ADA.

• 1990 – The Television Decoder Circuitry Act was passed the same year the ADA was enacted and mandated that all televisions 13 inches or larger manufactured for sale in the United States contain caption decoders.
• 1996 – The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required that digital television receivers contain caption-decoding technology and set forth benchmarks that would promulgate the use of captioning.
• 2010 – The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) required, among other things, that video programming that is closed captioned on TV also be captioned when distributed on the Internet.
• 2012 – A settlement in National Association of the Deaf (NAD) v. Netflix would provide increased access to movies and television streamed on the internet for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. The lawsuit charged the entertainment giant with violating the ADA by failing to provide closed captioning for most of its content.
• 2015 – Resolving concerns from deaf and hard-of-hearing communities to improve captioning quality, the FCC put in place a series of Caption Quality Best Practices, which included rules for accuracy, synchronicity, completeness and placement of captions.
• 2016 – Online video clips are required to be closed captioned if any portion of the clip appeared on television or via IP closed captioned at any time. A similar rule went into effect one year later that required montage video clips to be closed captioned from any prerecorded programming captioned on television or via IP.
• AI-powered captions became more widespread in the 2010s, with tech companies joining the speech recognition game and offering automated captioning services.

The captioning industry continues to grow today, with new technologies being explored as new media and video outlets become more popular. The ADA, itself, continues to evolve as new accessibility concerns are brought forth and courts across the country take up cases and claims and rule on interpretations.

Driving accessibility forward with scalable, inclusive solutions

Verbit is proud to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We continue to be a leader in accessibility by providing accurate, fast and scalable captioning, transcription, audio description and translation solutions for a wide range of industries including education, media, corporate and legal. Through our advanced AI platform, paired with professional human editors, we ensure content is not only compliant but also inclusive and engaging for all viewers.

Whether supporting real-time events with live captioning or delivering high-quality post-production captions for recorded media, Verbit remains committed to advancing communication equity and driving the next chapter of accessibility innovation.