Why not just use a sign language interpreter?
Closed captioning is a way to expand your ministry not only to deaf people, but to many hard-of-hearing people (especially the elderly) and to people just learning English as a second language. This article will describe how closed captioning works, and why it could be right for you. What is closed captioning? We’ve all seen the little “cc” symbol on the television set indicating that a show is closed captioned. Very few hearing people, however, understand what it means. For over ten years, it has meant that a deaf person could buy a special box called a caption decoder and connect it to their television to see subtitles on the screen. The “closed” captions are visible only to people with decoders, as opposed to “open” captions, which are visible to everyone. The decoder will become superfluous soon, because a new law will take effect. As of July of this year [This was written in 1993, and the Television Decoder Circuitry Act is in effect-gdr], all television sets with picture tubes 13
