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COLLABORATIVE FOR COMMUNICATION ACCESS VIA CAPTIONING INVITES YOU TO JOIN ADVOCACY FOR QUALITY CAPTIONING UNIVERSALLY IS THE CCAC MISSION. We invite you to join us in the online grass-roots project called the CCAC if you support the CCAC mission, hearing or not, deaf or not. Captioning speaks to us all – it’s our language, and it is missing in too many places.
Many of us cannot comprehend speech well in many group situations, even with other resources and technologies. Good communications are vital for everyday life. We require quality captioning/subtitles in many places, and the CCAC outlines ten places we call the ten CCAC categories of life, from education, employment and entertainment, to government, healthcare, transportation, and more.
In the autumn of 2009, it was decided that a new focused captioning advocacy project was needed, at first in the USA, and quickly it attracted international members. CCAC is neither a deaf nor a hearing loss association. It is an advocacy community aiming to educate and advocate on many levels for inclusion of quality captioning where none exists now. CCAC builds bridges among all individuals and groups for captioning advocacy.
The CCAC is all volunteers, with free membership, and a “working community” online. A public webite, blog, and social media extend the work of CCAC members online. Membership has a nice balance of “consumers” and “providers” – all working together to encourage and create new captioning inclusion projects. Any captioning advocacy project, from a small local one, to a regional or national project, and collaborations internationally too, are encouraged. Sharing questions and knowledge in the CCAC group is very effective. In year one of the CCAC, captioning inclusion achievements include CART for Court, requests for CART for professional conferences, captioning reminders for Internet videos, captioning advocacy for live theater and museum videos, and much more.
While many established organizations advocate for captioning (and CART, real time speech-to-text, with various names in different countries), those organizations have wider agendas (they advocate for many other resources also ) or wider constituencies (they advocate for people with many different disabilities). The CCAC focuses is one single theme, inclusion of quality captioning universally. Collaborations are invited!
CCAC is not-for-profit and not selling any services or products. Consumers are the ones who “drive” progress by asking for speech to text, sometimes facing many “no's” and often a long process that requires persistence and a “do not give up” attitude. CCAC provides encouragement, support online, and great information.
Inclusion of quality captioning benefits many thousands of other people as well. Captioning enhances learning to read, learning languages, search online, and provides records (transcripts) for knowledge- building. Many people with different language and learning needs use quality captioning, even though they do not have a hearing loss. United we can advocate, agitate, and legislate, yet this sometimes takes years.
The CCAC has helped members in “CCAC Action Requests,” not only for specific information, but also with “letters of support” when any member is seeking real time speech to text. The CCAC also offers public data-collection documents on the website – for all to submit information about local and broader captioning advocacy, so others can be inspired, and share advocacy experience.
In 2011, CCAC designed a creative “Community Service,” not only to benefit consumer CCAC members, but also to allow captioning education and demonstration local communities. CCAC provider members provide one hour of free service to eligible consumer situations at a convenient time during 2011. Consumers and providers can advocate together.
In some countries, real time captioning is expensive, and we aim to find ways to demonstrate how important it is. Captioning is our “ramp” for equal communication access, similar to wheelchair ramps which are generally accepted and provided in most countries in the modern world.
There is much more information about the CCAC on the website, including the membership form. Individuals and groups are welcome to join - all who support the CCAC mission. We welcome your interest! The web address is WWW.CCACAPTIONING.ORG. The email ccacaptioning@gmail.com.
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