The CCAC is a working membership community, along with so many friends and followers on social media, and with arms open to information and collaborations from older or newer other groups. All individuals and groups that support the CCAC mission are welcome to join. Membership is still free for individuals and non-profits. Click on this link to join.
CCAC’s newest advocacy project, along with every day captioning advocacy, is the service called CaptionMatch. Please go to its website to learn more (http://captionmatch.com). Managed also by volunteers, CaptionMatch extends CCAC education and advocacy to encourage the growth of captioning inclusion, and to offer a place to ask for captioning of any sort. CaptionMatch is a clearinghouse to find a provider, not a captioning company.
Membership in the CCAC itself is free and we aim to maintain it this way. At the same time, revenue is needed to continue operations and CCAC welcomes an annual donation or more, anytime, using the PayPal link on this website.
CCAC members come from many different backgrounds, including the founder (see below). Some are deaf, deafened, or have a hearing loss or different hearing needs. Others are captioning providers, working for companies, non-profits, agencies, or related enterprises. Still others are people who know the value of captioning inclusion for languages, literacy, and many other applications in the modern world. Hearing or not, families, neighbors and co-workers all invited to join the CCAC.
Most members also belong to and support one or more long-established organizations in disabilities, hearing loss and deafness, or technology entities. Within CCAC membership itself, all are volunteers for CCAC citizen-inspired captioning advocacy projects (CAPS).
The CCAC community shares information, ideas and especially actions, all for new and ongoing captioning advocacy. Advocacy is often a multi-step activity, with a lot of communications, education efforts, and persistence. The CCAC mission is to achieve inclusion of quality captioning universally. It’s needed in so many places!
The CCAC’s unique sole focus, captioning advocacy, are developed and implemented via discussions and actions in the CCAC members’ forum online, on the blog, in the newsletter, and on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as other campaigns. CCAC aims to have more face-to-face “meet-ups” also in coming months. CCAC welcomes new members and energies regularly.
The founder and executive leader is a deafened adult who saw the need (late 2009) for a new community to build bridges and energies for more vigorous captioning advocacy. The CCAC community was started informally online, and to date, has gained influence and accomplished much for a new group, now a quite large group (March 2013: 750 members). She is passionate about the need for much more inclusion of quality captioning where none exists now, and invests time and personal funds into the project. Her years of participation in, and leadership of, other professional and non-profit groups inform the activities and development of the CCAC. In June 2012, the CCAC became an official non-profit organization, to meet increasing interest and to further develop the mission. Funding sources and energies are invited!
CCAC membership is dedicated to advocacy – it does not matter to the advocate who does the job of captioning inclusion, as long as it’s done, and done with quality.
Lauren E. Storck, Ph.D. – Advocate for Accessibility Equality, Founder and President of the CCAC, an official non-profit organization. (Lauren, bottom row, second in from right, and other captioning advocates are in this photo from the CCAC Film.)
P.S. Many thanks to several volunteers who have worked with the founder since day one of the CCAC. Consumers and providers alike are most often “VBP” – very busy people! They are active at work, in other groups, and as volunteers. Several also donate time to the CCAC when it fits, for the website, for good CAPS, and more. They know who they are, past and present, and we thank them all.
