Growing up Deaf - Part 22

Intro to captioning at home

It wasn't til about 1977 or '78 when I lived in Louisiana when I was given a Sears Telecaptioner as a birthday gift. It was hard if not impossible to understand a lot of the dialogue, but the action wasn't a problem. Many a game show were easy to follow like the The Price Is Right and the $64,000 Pyramid, despite the dialogue.

Sesame Street and Electric Company were fun to watch, though not captioned til maybe 10 years later. I enjoyed Zoom as well as the Mickey Mouse Club and watched Batman with my brother. It was probably every boy's fantasy to meet Julie Newmar's Catwoman character. What a catsuit!

Little House on the Prairie was one of the better shows back then. Nothing is like it today.

I ordered the Telecaption 4000 in 1990 to replace the old captioner. I still have both today. In 1992, the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act mandated TVs larger than a certain size to have the caption circuit built in.

Seems the more modern shows put more emphasis on dialogue than action with some exceptions. Mom would sometimes go out to a movie and tell me if I could understand it or not.

Next - Intro to Captioning in Theatres