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Media Accessibility Information, Guidelines and Research

Television Literacy: Comprehension of Program Content Using Closed Captions for the Deaf

Elementary school deaf students were selected as participants in this 1998 study by Margaret S. Jelinek Lewis and Dorothy W. Jackson. They found that the time constraint of captions further compounded the literacy problem for deaf readers as captions move quickly off the screen. Deaf readers also exhibited a lack of fluent word reading, which adversely affects comprehension; word-reading fluency depended on the ability to recognize (effortlessly and automatically) letters, spelling patterns, and whole words. In addition, students who viewed captions at a slower pace of 78 wpm retained significantly more information than students who viewed captions at an average rate of 116 wpm.


Television Literacy: Comprehension of Program Content Using Closed Captions for the Deaf

Tags: research, captioning

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