Netflix captions lawsuit: impact on US and UK accesssibility
After a U.S. federal judge allows a lawsuit for Netflix to include closed captioning on its content, are VOD suppliers in danger of similar lawsuits in the UK?
This ruling is good news, especially as it gives a clear ruling on the application of the ADA to the web.
What is particularly interesting in this case is that, possibly as a result of this lawsuit, Netflix is already doing more than almost any other video-on-demand supplier to enrich its content with captions / subtitles.
In comparison, Netflix’s main rival in the UK – LoveFilm – doesn’t yet include any closed captions (or subtitles, as they are usually called in the UK) on its LoveFilm Instant service.
So is it at risk of a similar lawsuit in the UK?
Read my blog Netflix captions lawsuit: is LoveFilm in the UK even more exposed? to find out.
Prof Jonathan Hassell
Director of Hassell Inclusion and Lead-Author of BS8878
w: http://www.hassellinclusion.com/
t: @jonhassell
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Thanks for the link, Jonathan. Interesting developments.James Coltham - Local gov web manager by day, web and accessibility blogger at lunchtime, freelancer by night. Tweets at @prettysimple.
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Should the responsibility of captions be on the film production companies?
Not sure how this industry works, but if the information for the captions is available on DVD already, it can't be impossible to convert it so that's it's available for downloads. Perhaps online captions are not covered in the standard agreement with the companies who are creating the captions? In that case they should create a new agreement, and make the films accessible to the biggest number of people.
If the streaming companies have been offered a choice of films with and without subtitles and have chosen without, then they are fair game for the lawyers, unless the caption companies have been trying to hold them to ransom.
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I am deaf. My husband is hearing. We have an interesting perspective. We had to stop using Netflix when it became clear they didn't want to accommodate deaf customers. This morning I blogged about the class action lawsuit being settled at http://www.thewiseguys.com/2012/10/21/netflix-allegedly-making-progress-on-closed-captions-for-streaming-content/
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