The foundation for the creation of a Canadian captioning industry was set up by the Canadian Captioning Development Agency and executed by Canada Caption Inc. (CCI,) with help from advocacy organizations such as the Canadian Association of the Deaf and Canadian Association of Captioning Consumers, among others, over a 20 year period. The strategy was:

1. create a demand outside of deaf and hard of hearing community — market research, publicity campaigns such as Captioning Awareness week where broadcasters open captioned in prime time.[1]
2. create production technology — R&D funding, training;
3. create a business model that will bring new revenue to
4. underwrite the COST — CCI's closed captioning brought to you in part by...
5. create captioning standards and protocols and giving CAB permission to make available to Canadian broadcast industry.

The basic thinking was:

Create revenue and demand using logical, ethical and practical business practices that would give broadcast industry and regulators the necessary tools to do their jobs in a logical, ethical and practical way by:

1. creating demand, created volume - proven.
2. cost reduction — 2000 per hour in 1990 to 200 per hour in 1998.
3. creating and updating dedicated captioning technology — VoiceWriter non-linear captioning system burst the bubble and we now see well over 8 different captioning systems operating in Canada.
4. creating public awareness campaigns and market research studies created demand outside of the deaf and hard of hearing community through convincing bar owners to try putting on the captions, educators to incorporate captioning as part of their curriculum, etc. . Today deaf and hard of hearing Canadians represent 14% of caption consumers, with the remaining 86% being primarily sports gyms and bars.[2]
5. creating and supporting a transparent and open market for captioning — Canada Caption Inc. implemented its sunset clause in 1998 when the Canadian broadcasting industry took in-house the revenue from closed captioning brought to you by..., supporting fully the maturing of the captioning production industry.
6. Creating, framing and working with advocacy groups allowed a voice to be heard by broadcasters and regulators in language that could be understood by them.
7. Demonstrating a business model for captioning that worked while addressing the necessary key ingredients needed to seed the growth of an industy—Canada Caption Inc. was incorporated as a Charity with the sole purpose of consolidating, stimulating and demonstrating the viability of a new industry and revenue for Canadian broadcasting through a win/win business model.

Then in 1992 CCI underwrote, in partnership with CBC, 100% of the 1992 Winter Olympics through the on-air sponsorship model. CCI did not produce the captions, but contracted 100% of the work to what was to become the vibrant captioning production industry that exists in Canada today. Within this model, CCI went on to sub-contract 1000's of hours of captioning, with stringent requirements around quality, to the Canadian captioning production industry, before it removed itself from the equation as the industry no longer needed its charitable work to thrive. We note and CCI generated 100% of its revenue from a social marketing business model THE ENTIRE caption production budget was spent on original, Canadian content, closed captioning. As with today's descriptive video, all popular and prime time American programs were already captioned.

Like descriptive video today, closed captioning was also challenged by technological access limitations. The system required deaf or hard of hearing individuals to purchase closed captioned decoders to access the captioning. CCI worked with SMPTE, Industry Canada (Department of Communication), the FCC, television manufacturing industry groups, NABA and other stakeholders in the NTSC broadcast engineering industry in bringing about a solution to this challenge which resulted in the Closed Captioned decoder chip circuitry act, which required that all televisions over 13 inches have a built in closed caption decoder. SAP, the distribution spectrum currently used for description, is now built into all televisions as well.

While operating, CCI worked closely with the CRTC and the broadcasting industry to partner in a solution- based policy framework for captioning. In fact, when the CRTC issued Public Notice 1995-48 requiring broadcasters to implement a 90% captioned broadcast DAY; CCI awarded the CAB with a Golden Cup Award in 1998 for supporting and complying with the notice on behalf of its members.

Arguably, closed captioning is at 100% broadcast day as a result of common sense business models, industry wide partnerships, open standards, dedicated captioning technology, with charitable and non-profit organizations playing a role in stimulating and supporting new revenues for the private sector and articulating demand.