Closed Captions Bring the TV Screen to Life : Christmas Arrived Early for Hearing-Impaired Children in Covina-Valley School District Program Who Got ‘Equal Access’ to Television.

For most of his life, 6-year-old Jimmy Wiley liked television but always knew it could be better. Because he is deaf, the Mesa School first-grader missed the dialogue that went along with the pictures.

Now that’s changed.

Christmas came early this year for Jimmy and 66 other hearing-impaired children who last week received closed-caption decoders. The devices enable them to read on screen the dialogue and sound effects that most people hear when watching television.

Each of the 150 students in the Covina-Valley Unified School District’s program for the hearing impaired now has “equal television access,” said June M. Leffler, who works with the Virginia-based National Captioning Institute and organized the presentation. In June, Leffler presented 42 of the units, valued at about $200 each, to students at South Hills High School. Last week’s presentations ensure that all the remaining students in the district’s program have decoders.

First in State

The program for the hearing impaired has students from 13 San Gabriel Valley school districts, including preschoolers to high school students. It is the first program in the state in which all students have the decoding devices, Leffler said. The students in the Covina program who were not given the devices could afford to buy them, she said.

Donations from a number of Lions Clubs in Southern California, local businessmen, Covina-Valley teachers and Cal Poly Pomona’s sports programs raised $20,000, toward purchasing the decoders. But the money did not cover all the units, Leffler said.

“I’m about $2,000 short, but I’m not going to see 15 to 18 kids not have them and have to wait longer, especially at Christmas,” she said. The additional cost will be covered through future fund raisers, she said.

Leffler works with the national organization for the Lions’s Clubs to help raise funds for decoders. An official of the West Covina Lions Club heard her speak recently and asked if she would coordinate the effort here to raise funds.

Individual Case

Pam Wiley, Jimmy’s mother, said the family had wanted a decoder for some time but could never afford it. “It’s been very hard for us to sign to him and for him to watch us and the TV all at the same time,” she said.

Through his teacher, Jean Yancy, Jimmy signed that he wanted to hook up his decoder as soon as possible. “I’m happy,” he beamed, “Now, I’ll be able to watch my favorite thing on TV--dinosaurs.”

Leffler said research by the National Captioning Institute and the federal Commission for the Education of the Deaf has shown television to be an important educational and socializing tool for the children.

“To have a decoder makes such a difference,” said Leffler, who termed closed captioning one of the most important technological breakthroughs for the deaf since hearing aids were invented. “Every year (the children without decoders) are missing out on so much information. Not having one impairs their learning and their natural development.”

Even without comprehending the dialogue, deaf children will watch television, said Joan Moorman, project specialist in charge of the district’s program. “Why not make it educational,” she said. Watching decoded television may be more educational for deaf children, who have to exercise their reading skills, she said.

Concept Misunderstood

Although closed-caption technology has been widespread since 1980, Leffler said, most Americans don’t know what the television guide listings mean. “Eighty percent of those people cannot tell you what it is, how it works,” she said. “They think it’s something in a circle, like people doing sign language.”

The actual closed-caption process is similar to the subtitles displayed on the screen of a foreign language movie. But it is not limited to spoken words. Sound effects are shown in brackets and songs are delineated by musical notes.

Open captioning, where the messages appear on the screen without decoding, sometimes appear when broadcasters want to display news or announcements without interrupting a program.

Currently, about 400 hours a week in closed-captioned programming is available on television. That includes most prime-time shows and some programs shown by independent stations, according to the National Captioning Institute, a nonprofit organization that does the majority of the caption encoding in this country. The number of captioned programs is scheduled to double within three years.

Nationwide, about 7 million people have hearing losses severe enough to require decoders for television viewing. But only about 200,000 households receive decoded programming, according to the institute.

Leffler, who lives in North Tonawanda, N.Y., has two teen-age sons who are deaf and whose needs originally spurred her activism. In November, her sons were able to watch the presidential election returns for the first time with full comprehension. Before, she lamented, they felt left out.

So far, Leffler has helped to raise money for about 300 decoders, which have been distributed in several school systems.

Leffler said she has contacted school districts and service groups in the Long Beach area about raising funds for decoders there sometime in the spring. For more information on Leffler’s program, decoders or the National Captioning Institute, call (800) 533-WORD. Those with hearing impairments may call (800) 321-TDDS.