"And I wouldn't be surprised if people just weren't sure how to get in touch with them."Īnd even though Netflix has greatly expanded its captions in recent years, it's galling that there are still so many errors. "Netflix has no reason to disclose how many times people contact them about it," she said in an interview with The Week. To make matters worse, Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers says that even when a Netflix subscriber reports an error in the captions, the company doesn't necessarily hold the rights to fix it. Insiders also point to differing file formats and competing video standards as reasons that wires get crossed.
NETFLIX FONT BLOCK TV
TV distribution is a complex process that involves many entities shuffling around different assets of a final product, of which closed captions are only one small part. But others, hearing impaired and not, are puzzled by the obscurity of some of the errors ("ALL STATIONS PREPARE FOR A HAPPY BIRTHDAY" reads one of Commander Riker's lines, inexplicably, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) An entire Tumblr is devoted to awkward Netflix captions - some containing actual mistakes, and others that completely fail to capture the tone of a scene.
Many viewers who rely on closed captions are glad they exist at all, and contrast Netflix positively with Amazon and YouTube. "As we push for 100 percent captioning, our next battle will be the quality of the captioning itself," said National Association of the Deaf CEO Howard Rosenblum. The agreement is vague, though, on the quality of those captions. Netflix filed to dismiss the case, which was denied later, the two agreed on a timetable that will make captions available on all of the site's streaming content by later this year. In 2011, the National Association of the Deaf sued Netflix for what was at the time a sparsely captioned streaming collection, which the advocacy organization said violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Netflix has long had a troubled relationship with viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. Another called the captions "so awful I feel I could do a better job myself, and that's especially bad considering the fact that I feel the need to use subtitles in the first place." "Netflix subtitling really gets my goat!" wrote one commenter. "If someone says 'Kill that motherfucker!' then shouldn't everyone be able to have the same shocked reaction to the word 'motherfucker' as anyone else? Why should people using subtitles be spared?" "If someone is watching a show with subtitles they ought to have the same sort of experience," she wrote. In particular, Wildman (who is hearing impaired) noticed that the captions on Breaking Bad censored coarse language - even mild terms like "balls" - that was completely unedited on the actual audio track. Others contain the bare text, or even less, as they inexplicably skip words or whole sentences.īlogger and law student Sam Wildman grew so bemused by the captions that she wrote a sharply worded open letter to the streaming giant, criticizing the service for inconsistent and inaccurate transcriptions. Some identify each speaker with a name, like a script, while others are placed artfully to convey the same information, like dialogue in a graphic novel. On an episode of ABC's cult sitcom Better Off Ted, the captions block out actual foreign language subtitles with the tautological block text "SPEAKING JAPANESE."Ī caption on the pilot episode of Fox animated sitcom Bob's Burgers says that a cell phone is playing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," but only a generic ring tone is heard.Ībove all, the captions are strikingly inconsistent - even between episodes of the same show. "Report to the new Quartermaster for ur documentation," reads a caption attributed to M in 2012's hit 007 flick Skyfall. Many obscure the opening credits, line up poorly with spoken lines, or linger into uncomfortable stretches of silence. But for all the service's strengths, one aspect is still decidedly twentieth century: The bizarrely low standards for Netflix's closed captions, which continue to alienate subscribers who are deaf, hard of hearing, or simply have difficulty understanding dialogue.īy and large, closed captions on Netflix's instant streaming service are loaded with nonsense characters, transcription errors, and dialogue so implausible that it's hard to believe they're actually transcription errors. In less than a decade, Netflix has assembled an unprecedented library of streaming film and television and organized it with a sophisticated recommendation algorithm that hooks viewers into lengthy binge-watching sessions.