September 26, 2011

Finding Closed Caption Programming Available on iTunes

Closed captioning for the hearing impaired is now available in iTunes for new TV episodes as well as thousands of movies and iTunes U video episodes. As you browse the store you can determine whether the particular content you're looking at has closed caption support by looking for the small cc icon in the info on the left side of their pages. The cc icon also appears in lists of TV episodes and in iTunes U offerings with multiple episodes (e.g. Developing Apps for iOS, from Stanford). To find all the content with closed captioning in Movies, TV or iTunes U, click the Power Search link in Quick LInks in the iTunes store, select the category you want to search within from the Results popup, and check the option to search only for closed captioning before you use the Search button.

If you're watching the video on your computer, you can turn closed captioning on and off via the speech bubble icon near the right of the controls that appear across the bottom of the window when you point there. On iPhone and iPod touch, Select iPod in General Settings and scroll down to the Video section. On iPad look for the switch in Video in General Settings.