The 2012 adaptation of the political drama, House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright is a 13-part download-only series on Netflix. In a recent development, Netflix agreed to caption one hundred per cent of its content. As it builds up to this, the user interface has been improved so that captioned videos are easier to find. Providing captions for the House of Cards trailer is a further indication of its commitment to deaf access.
The captioning of trailers for TV and in cinema is something that is greatly lacking and creates frustration for viewers wishing to be part of the hype around a new series. There are websites where you can watch captioned trailers, such as Captionfish and YourLocalCinema, (where audio described trailers are also available) but major service providers are yet to deliver these themselves.
“There are opportunities to watch accessible trailers but they never come directly from the source,” said Ally Woodford, Project Manager for cinema and DVD at Media Access Australia. “Ideally, a movie producer would provide an accessible trailer to be played in-cinema and also on DVD but I’m yet to see this happen. The complementary services of Captionfish and YourLocalCinema do a great job in filling this gap but services should be streamlined so viewers don’t need to seek out the accessible version elsewhere.”
Netflix, currently available in North America, Latin America, the UK and Scandinavia, is breaking that mould for online video on demand by considering access through captions from a video’s first promotion.
In Australia, there is very little captioning available on video on demand services, especially for trailers. Only Apple iTunes currently offers captioning on approximately fifteen per cent of the television content it distributes.
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