Timeline of Closed Captioning Development

• 1971:  Preview of captioning at the First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville, Tennessee

• 1972:  During a test at Gallaudet University, ABC and the National Bureau of Standards debuted closed captions embedded within the normal broadcast of Mod Squad.

• 1972:  Open captioning began on PBS’s “The French Chef”

  • Open captioning appeared soon after on:

    • ABC World News Tonight

    • Zoom

    • Once Upon a Classic

  • These programs were captioned by the WGBH Caption Center

• 1976:  The FCC adopted rules that provide that line 21 of the vertical blanking interval (VBI) be used primarily for the transmission of closed captioning

• 1976:  The FCC adopted a rule requiring television licensees to transmit emergency messages in a visual format

• 1979:  National Captioning Institute created

• March 16, 1980:  The first closed captioned television series were broadcast for those who had bought caption decoders

  • The ABC Sunday Night Movie

  • The Wonderful World of Disney

  • Masterpiece Theater

• 1982:  Real-time captioning debuted

• 1990:  Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 was passed, requiring all television receivers with screens of 13” or larger be able to receive and display captions by 1993

• 1990:  Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 enacted, requiring all federally funded public service announcements to be closed captioned. 

• 1992:  FCC adopted technical standards for closed captioning on cable systems

• 1993:  Requirements from Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 take effect

• 1996:  Telecommunications Act of 1996 adds Section 713 to the Communications Act -- requiring the FCC to prescribe rules and implementation schedules for closed captioning of television video programs

• 1997:  The FCC adopts rules that gradually increase the amount of programming requiring closed captioning

• 1998:  FCC’s closed captioning rules go into effect

• 2000:  The FCC adopts an Order requiring an increasing amount of digital television programming to be captioned and establishes a phase-in schedule for closed captioning of digital programming

• 2006:  100% of all new video programming, with exceptions, must be closed captioned on both digital and analog televisions (new analog programming is programming first aired on/after January 1, 1998; new digital programming is programming first aired on/after July 1, 2002)

• 2008:  75% of all pre-rule video programming (pre-rule analog programming is programming first aired before January 1, 1998; pre-rule digital programming is programming first aired before July 1, 2002) must be captioned

• 2010:  100% of all new analog and digital Spanish language programs, with exceptions, must be closed captioned

• 2012:  75% of all pre-rule Spanish-language video programming must be captioned