The deaf and hard-of-hearing Internet users now have a way to watch free videos on YouTube. Google announced earlier this year that it has added automatic caption capability to videos on YouTube.

The change has been lauded by advocates for the hearing impaired, such as the Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Milwaukee. The center called it “great news for deaf and hard-of-hearing Internet users” in a press...

Many federal laws have been enacted to require greater access to telecommunications. There is only one problem – the federal laws that we worked so hard to enact over the past 20 years have not kept pace with many new technologies. For instance, television shows that are re-shown over the Internet are under no requirement to be captioned – even if they had captions when they were shown on TV! Also, small TVs, cell phones, PDAs,...

By MIGUEL HELFT Published: November 19, 2009

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In the first major step toward making millions of videos on YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.

The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, which will make it easier...