I typically don’t post about Novell enterprise products, but I’m making an exception here because this really affects the larger community and not just the corporate customers.

A few weeks ago, Novell released some videos to demo SUSE Linux Enterprise. The only problem was, they were released without captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. This was due to the rush to finish the videos and release them in time for the launch.

I’m glad to say that this has now been made right, and the videos are available with captioning. Furthermore, in the future I know that Novell will be trying to make sure that videos are released with captioning right away, without any delay.

This is also something that the larger community should take into consideration. If possible, when making tutorials and videos, consider adding closed captioning.

Looking for captioning tools? Jon ‘maddog’ Hall has written a nice piece that discusses this issue over on Linux Pro Magazine:

What finally convinced me was the ease of doing the closed captions. Joner showed me a site where you can easily link to the existing video on various “video” sites, then use overstream to create a file that has the timing marks and the text for your native language. This file is called an “SRT” file. Once you have the marks and closed captioning correct, you can download the file and upload it to places like YouTube by editing your video’s information, clicking on “Captions and Subtitles” and uploading the SRT file.

You can also create another copy of the file, and either you (or a friend) can substitute another language for your native language. Then you have a foreign language subtitle!

Captioning and translation capability in one fell swoop! Can’t beat that.

Most people never have to think about captioning, so it’s one of those things too often overlooked. However, captioning makes a major difference for those who do need it. By going a few extra steps, your message reaches a larger, and grateful, audience.

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