QUALITY CAPTIONING UNIVERSALLY IS THE CCAC MISSION. We invite you to join us in the online grass-roots project called the CCAC if you have interest in more captioning in many places. We say that “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 so 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, we conferred with friends and colleagues in several circles of people with hearing loss and deafness, and decided that a new focused project was needed, at first in the USA, and quickly it attracted international members also. 

The CCAC is all volunteers, with free membership, and has a “working community” online. It’s an advocacy organization with members who are deafened, hard of hearing, deaf, hearing, and others.  Membership achieves a nice balance of “consumers” and “providers” – all working together online 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 invited. Sharing questions and knowledge in the group is very effective.

While many good 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 on a single theme, and it aims for group collaborations. Individuals can accomplish much, yet groups are better J.

CCAC is not-for-profit and all volunteers in shared advocacy. Consumers are the ones who “drive” progress by asking for speech to text over and over again, often a long process that requires persistence and a “do not give up” attitude.  CCAC member consumers have any level of hearing loss, or any interest in this struggle for all. For example, many people with different language and learning needs also require quality captioning, even though they do not have a hearing loss. United we can advocate, agitate, and legislate, yet this sometimes takes years. As a last resort, there is legal action, and at times this is the only way to ensure equal rights.

CCAC itself does not sell any captioning, CART, or broadcasting services or products. The founder is a person who is deafened, and is also a member of many established organizations. One CCAC goal is to “build bridges” for a focus on much more inclusion of captioning.

The CCAC in one short year since it was founded has good success stories to share (see the website).  It has developed an informative public website with useful articles and videos. It also has an active Members’ Forum online that many describe as intelligent and effective. 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 we can share information together online.

Too many in the “hearing world” do not understand the important varieties of hearing loss, nor even comprehend what quality captioning is. As one CCAC member says so well, "...captioning is a mainstream solution – a tiny fraction of deaf or people with hearing loss are sign language users vis a vis mega millions who use captions….”

For 2011, CCAC designed a creative benefit for all consumer members to inquire about: all CCAC provider members agree to provide one hour of free service to eligible consumer situations at a convenient time during 2011. With donated hours, consumer members of the CCAC will be able to educate and advocate more, and the CCAC will offer this “community service” where 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. Some say it is our “ramp” for communication and 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. We welcome your interest and support!  The web address is WWW.CCACAPTIONING.ORG. The CCAC is also on facebook, twitter, and linkedin. The affiliated blog is ccacblog.wordpress.com, and our email address is CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM. Talk to us soon.