Subtitling the Soaps

Monday, the CBS half-hour soap “The Bold and the Beautiful” becomes the third daytime drama to offer closed-captioning for the hearing-impaired, following captioning in recent weeks by ABC’s half-hour “Loving” and NBC’s hourlong “Days of Our Lives.”

“We are very excited about this,” said Lee Phillip Bell, co-exec producer of “B&B.;” “I know a lot of people who read lips who can understand what’s being said when the actor’s facing the camera. But if they turn away, forget it.

“This will open up new horizons.”

Don Thieme, exec director, public affairs and development of the nonprofit National Captioning Institute in D.C., said that a grant from the U.S. Department of Education helped underwrite dialogue subtitling on the three soaps.

Because NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” is an hour show, the producer, Corday Productions, covered half the costs of subtitling technology to serve deaf viewers.

This year, for the first time, all prime-time network shows are closed-captioned for some 20 million hearing-impaired Americans. But nine network daytime dramas are still without it.