Making a Connection With Verbal World : Hearing: A Carlsbad company is helping the San Diego deaf community by closed-captioning two local newscasts.

Tom Galey can’t get enough of closed-captioning. For Galey, who is deaf, closed-captioning of local newscasts helps him connect with his community. It helps him stay in touch with current events and local activities.

“It’s more meaningful to be able to see pictures on TV. It means more to me than sitting and reading an article,” he said.

To the deaf, television is fascinating and frustrating, the ultimate cruel twist of fate. Its visual images speak to them, but their impairments prevent them from hearing the words and messages.

Closed-captioning--scrolling the words across the bottom of the screen--is the most popular answer, and it is becoming relatively commonplace on national television shows. However, for the estimated 240,000 hearing-impaired residents of San Diego County, only two local newscasts--at 4:30 p.m. on KFMB-TV (Channel 8) and at 6:30 p.m. on KGTV (Channel 10)--are closed-captioned. Both are done by Media Captioning Services Inc., a fledgling Carlsbad-based company that specializes in captioning programs.

“So many years we have been left in the dark,” said Galey, a staffer at the local Deaf Community Services.

He watches the local news every weekday, thanks to closed-captioning. But two local newscasts, he says, is a small window to the information and entertainment of local television.

“I believe we deaf people have the very same rights to be selective. If one TV station is prefered over another, I think we should be entitled to the option of our choice.”

Not surprisingly, money is the major stumbling block to having more choices. Though the price is negotiable, it costs anywhere from $40,000 to $55,000 a year to caption a show five nights a week, according to Richard Pettinato, chief executive officer and director of Media Captioning Services.

The company added the Channel 8 newscast last May with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. A similar grant helped Media Captioning open its doors in January, 1988, when it started captioning Channel 10’s 6:30 p.m. newscast. When the Channel 10 grant ran out last year, funding was picked up by Channel 10 and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Channel 10 also paid Media Captioning to caption other special programs, such as the recent “Ask the Media” forum and a debate between sheriff candidates.

“There is no way of measuring how many people actually utilize closed-captioning, but we did find that 14% of any given metropolitan area is considered hearing impaired,” Channel 10 assistant news director Bill Gray said. “We figured if there was any way to keep (closed-captioning) on the air, we’d do it.”

Media Captioning is a for-profit company founded by Patricia Ferrier, who spent 13 years working as court reporter in federal court in Los Angeles. She grew tired of the grind of the courts and sought to do something more with her transcribing skills.

“Money can’t be your motivation to get into captioning,” Ferrier said. “This is the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done.”

The process of captioning the programs is relatively simple, but it is not easy. Unlike captioning of national programs, the locals news is captioned in “real time,” meaning there is no script or a delay in transmission to aid the captioning service. When Media Captioning started live captioning of the Channel 10 newscast in 1988, it was the first live captioning of the news regularly performed on the West Coast.

The skills necessary to transcribe the newscasts, an avalanche of words and names and figures, makes it difficult to find employees, Ferrier said. She now has three captioners, with two in training.

“It requires a much higher skill level” than court reporting, Ferrier said. “And you can make so much more money in courts that we need really dedicated people.”

Each newscaster has a special verbal style, and some are easier to transcribe than others.

“Michael Tuck is real difficult, very challenging,” Ferrier said. “Kimberly Hunt is a little slower when she speaks. It’s a matter of getting into the rhythm.”

As the newscasts are transcribed at Ferrier’s Carlsbad office, the captioning is beamed back to the television station, where it is transmitted with the help of a special encoder. To receive the closed captioning, the home viewer must have a decoder, which sells for $150 to $200.

Closed-captioning “opens up a whole new world” for the deaf, said Patricia Sieglen, executive director of Deaf Community Services.

Because of their hearing problems, the early education of many deaf people focuses on developing speech skills, she said. Though it is changing, and more deaf people are receiving more well-rounded educations, many of the deaf have weak reading skills.

“There is a language barrier in sign language, it has its own structure and syntax,” Sieglen said. “English is a second language for many deaf people.”

Television, with the help of closed-captioning, can be a useful tool in integrating deaf people into the mainstream, making them feel part of society.

“Captioning is exciting here,” Sieglen said. “We have deaf children who are motivated to learn English so they can watch television.”

But it may be difficult to fund further captioning, given the economic climate. To help keep the business growing, Media Captioning is attempting to expand into the Los Angeles market, where there is no live captioning of local news.

“The feeling we’re getting is that grants are probably going to be more sparse in the future,” Ferrier said.