Although there is not a lot of information on 'hearing perspectives vs. Deaf perspectives' on Closed Captioning in particular, I have taken information from different sources with regards to Deaf perspective on the efficiency of Closed Captioned services today.
Canadian Association of the Deaf: (2012)
- Quality captioning (open or closed) or sign language interpreting should be mandatory for all programming and is achievable immediately. No excuses.
- Full accessibility--subtitles vs. Closed Captioning--subtitles only make dialogue available. Closed Captioning offers the complete version of the audio track including sound effects, off screen noises, musical cues, etc.
The quality of captioning remains a concern. Captions must be verbatim and not summaries or edits of actual spoken dialogue in order to make anyones jobs easier; this is a form of discrimination whether it was intended to be or not.
I collected some answers from a couple of my Deaf friends on Closed Captioning. Their names will not be disclosed for confidentiality purposes.
I asked them both the following question:
"Do you trust all Closed Captioning? Is CC good enough for Deaf, hard of hearing, anyone with a hearing loss?"
Friend (1)
"It's half trust Closed Captioning. It's a problem it not show swear like cover "bleep" and some copy DVD sometime like topic off Closed Captioning."
Friend (2)
"Some deaf people and hard of hearing saw CC and they aren't good because CC have few mistakes grammar and miss words or wrong, I am not sure. I guess CC is fine."
Based on these answers alone, there is a palpable gap between the Deaf community and proper Closed Captioning. When I was discussing this topic with my first friend he mentioned that all the information included in a movie or other captioned source does not always get included. As is mentioned above in his statement, not including swear words, but rather covering those words up with "bleep" via captioning is an issue; full accessibility to the video in question is automatically eliminated. Deaf people have a right to full accessibility to the information they are seeing, even if that includes swear words.