AMIC Captioning Guidelines

By Tammie Shedd, RPR, Fairfax, Va.

The Accessible Media Industry Coalition (AMIC), which was formed September 1, 2003, is a trade coalition founded by a group of 25 companies devoted to making television and other audio/visual media programs accessible to all viewers.

One of AMIC's focuses has been to create captioning quality guidelines. The guidelines are still a work in progress and have not been published. Some of the information found in AMIC's draft guidelines is printed below.

The committee working on the development of the realtime quality guidelines said there are two elements to realtime caption quality: completeness and accuracy. The committee's list of items to be considered when determining the completeness of realtime captions includes, but is not limited to, the following:

1. Captions appear continuously from the start to the end of the broadcast
2. Meaningful punctuation is included
3. Speakers are identified

The committee's list of items to be counted as errors when determining the accuracy of realtime captions includes, but is not limited to, the following:

1. Wrong words
2. Missing essential words
3. Misstrokes
4. Untranslates
5. Wrong numbers
6. Homophone conflicts

In drafting the guidelines, the committee has been careful to point out that the relative difficulty of a broadcast will affect the completeness and quality of the captions. There are a number of elements to be considered when determining the relative difficulty of a broadcast. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Preparation material
2. Speaker accents
3. Overlapping speakers
4. Clarity of program audio

As noted, these realtime quality guidelines are still being developed. More will come as the process continues.