I am deaf as a doornail, and have been since 3rd grade… 8 years old I think?  I’ve always sucked at figuring out my age during life events.  Anyway, I’m really happy to see that a lot of online video websites such as YouTube and Hulu are making an effort to support closed captioning.  Now, if I’m lucky enough, I can finally watch some videos and understand what they’re saying.  A good example is the Weekly Address from President-Elect Obama:

If a president has done this before, I’ve never seen it.  Thank you, Obama!

Hulu.com also has a list of recent TV shows such as The Office, with closed captioning included.  Now if I’ve missed a show I can watch it whenever I get a chance.

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding closed captioning.  As in, why hasn’t it changed to keep up with the times?  Why doesn’t it look better?  Why did it take so long for YouTube to add that feature?  It seems that it takes several years for accessibility to catch up with technology.  It shouldn’t be that way, but I don’t know enough about the process to offer a better alternative.  Maybe I should read up.