This week, the Described and Captioned Media Program is celebrating its Read Captions Across America campaign held in conjunction with the National Education Association’s Read Across America campaign. The annual event takes place on or around March 2, which is the birthday of children’s author Dr. Seuss.
The purpose of RCAA is to raise awareness — particularly among children and their parents and teachers — that video-based media can be just as effective at encouraging and fostering reading skills as books, as long as captions are always turned on.
“Even though captions were originally developed for people who are deaf or have a hearing loss to provide access to news programs, meetings, conferences, classrooms, sports programs, and more, studies have proven that second language learners as well as children who utilize captioning show significant improvement in reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and word recognition,” said Jana B. Colter, RMR, CRR, CBC, CPP, a CART captioner from Louisville, Ky.
“Interestingly enough, just recently I read an article that said only about 20 percent of the people who use captioning are deaf or hard of hearing. The Read Captions Across America campaign is a valuable tool in helping to raise the public’s awareness about the many benefits of captioning,” added Colter, who also serves as co-chair of NCRA’s Broadcast and CART Captioning Committee.
NEA’s RAA effort is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading.
DCMP, which provides an array of services to support and improve the academic achievement of students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf blind, is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
More information about RCAA, including ideas and tips for getting involved, is available at the Read Captions Across America website.
