Television and Vision: Reading Captions When Vision is Blurred

Closed captions for television have become an important means of communication for hearing-impaired people. Yet, previous studies show that hearing-impaired people are very likely to have visual problems that may interfere with caption reading. In this study, the effect of reduced vision on caption reading is examined. Six hearing-impaired and 14 hearing subjects viewed segments of captioned movies on a 19-inch television screen at a distance of three meters. All of the subjects had normal vision. Their vision was blurred with plus lenses of five different strengths. The data show that caption reading is affected by relatively small amounts of blur. If a person has even a slight visual problem, the caption letters under normal television viewing conditions are too small for maximum reading performance.