I don’t usually watch TV with the closed captioning on, because I’m not hard of hearing – despite all those years in radio!
 
But I do occasionally turn it on, especially if I’m watching a show from England and some of those thick accents make it hard to understand what’s being said. Which brings me to the BBC iPlayer and the latest incarnation of Dr. Who, an old favourite show of mine.
 
I’ve been watching the latest episodes off their website, which is free with a VPN, and I decided to turn on the CC. And what I saw was brilliant. No, not the episodes, but what they decided to do with those words of dialogue that appear on the screen.
 
In the show, The Doctor, the main character, has his captioning come up in the usual white lettering with black background. But whenever his main companion in the show, a character named Ruby Sunday, says anything, her words are portrayed on screen in a dark yellow, also with a black background. Any third person that utters anything will be seen in a mid-dark blue or green colour.       
 
That way, even if a character is off camera or two actors are speaking over each other at once, you always know exactly who (Who?) is saying what. At first, I found it a little weird, but after watching for a bit, I realized what a good idea this is. Colour coding the captioning by character.
 
It works very well, there’s no confusion and it’s a great idea. I don’t know if it’s more expensive or not or if anyone here does it, but if not, I wish they’d bring the idea to North America. The captioning may be closed, but I hope the case for it isn’t.