Amazon, NAD Reach Captioning Agreement

Amazon reached agreement with the National Association for the Deaf to caption 100 percent of its Prime online video content, and by the end of 2016 to put captions on 100 percent of online video content viewed more than 10 times within the previous 90 days, NAD said in a news release. The agreement includes adding captions to titles that don’t already have them, NAD said. Amazon already has captions on “the vast majority” of titles and the agreement will result in “more than 190,000 titles made available with closed captions in Amazon’s catalog,” NAD said. The deal is “an enormous step in making online entertainment accessible to the 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States alone,” NAD CEO Howard Rosenblum said in the release. “We have already undertaken, at our own expense, to provide captions on titles that content providers have not provided,” Amazon Video Vice President Jim Freeman said. “As a result, all content available through Prime Video has been captioned since the beginning of this year.” Amazon has been criticized before by NAD and others for not captioning all content, violating what the groups said were FCC rules (see report in the March 11, 2013, issue).