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I have a hearing loss and am dependent on closed captioning, or subtitles, on movies/TV. With the new trend of watching shows on computer, I find that some are captioned and some not. For example, CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" is captioned. "Breaking Bad" is not captioned on computer. Both shows ARE captioned on TV. Any ideas on when/if the FCC will catch up to shows streamed on computer? I'm feeling left out!

Maureen Kilgour, Alpine

There are 36 million Americans who have some degree of hearing loss from mild to profound, and 8 million of them wear hearing aids, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America. That's a lot of people who, like Maureen, feel ostracized from entertainment because they can't hear what's going on (then again they're not missing much considering most of the crap Hollywood is pumping out these days).

Fortunately, Congress passed a new law last year called the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act that will ensure that closed captioning be mandatory on video streaming services that provide television programs. It amends the Communications Act, which already mandates that television programs on cable and broadcast TV be captioned.

Internet streaming services are now including closed captioning. Netflix, for instance, just introduced captions for some of its movies and TV shows. So has Hulu.com. And all of the broadcast networks, including NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC, caption full episodes on their respective websites. Meanwhile, Xfinity TV, the online video service by Comcast that streams many cable shows, has only some programs captioned.

If you click on a film or show that has captions, you will see the closed captioning symbol. Click on it, and synchronized captions will appear.

Most YouTube videos are not officially captioned, but Google, which owns the video hub, has done something interesting. It has automatic audio transcription software that uses speech recognition to transcribe the voices in its videos into captions.

Most of the videos have this service, which you can access by clicking on the closed captioning button, though it's far from perfect. Sometimes, it takes the voices in a video and churns out gibberish, but there's enough correct transcription that you can get the general meaning of what's being said.

Meanwhile, if you create and upload a video to YouTube, you now can also include a transcript of what's said on the video, and Google will create the captions and time it to the video for you.

While we wait for captions to become more prevalent on Internet video, you can check with companies like Phonak, Sennheiser or Williams Sound, which make assisted-listening devices for televisions and phones, to see if their accessories also work with computers. Just putting on a pair of headphones and turning up the sound will not work for people with partial hearing loss. That just distorts the sound.

Brenda Battat, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America, said the Internet world has been slow to adapt for those with partial hearing loss, but it is getting better. "You'll be seeing more and more of that," she said. "Before, there was no video on the Internet [when the first law was passed mandating cations for TV] so the law has to catch up with the technology."

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More answers online • Keep those questions coming because starting this week, I'll be answering a lot more tech questions than what appears in the paper each week, and they'll be posted on our website. There, you'll also find an archive of all of the questions I've answered in the past, on subjects such as the best way to hook up your Blu-ray player or how to speed up your 5-year-old computer. Go to http://www.sltrib.com/topics/ohmytech to see past columns. And if you have a tech question, email it to ohmytech@sltrib.com. Don't forget to include your full name and where you're from.