#CaptionSmosh
http://bit.ly/captionsmosh

See accurate captions in this volunteer-captioned video: https://www.facebook.com/subtitleyoutube/videos/vb.240675666096242/484257205071419/?type=2&theater

Way back in 2005, two teenagers started what became a wildly popular,  award-winning channel on YouTube: Smosh!   (Smosh is at www.youtube.com/user/smosh). At that time, YouTube had no support for closed captioning so deaf and hard of hearing people were unable to enjoy and experience Smosh.  Now its 15 years later. Smosh has at least 20 million subscribers - and no captions. 

YouTube has automatic captioning, also known as autocaps, or craptions. The autocaps aren't accurate captioning. To be understandable, captions need to be edited. Rikki Poynter explains about the ineffectiveness of Craptions in her video, "Automatic cRaptions Are Not Captions!" This video features two screenshots from Smosh videos! Both screenshots have been previously used on this petition.

In July 2015 a  digital Smosh movie will be coming out (IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4184878/). It will be released at Vidcon on July 23. This movie also features other top YouTube stars, and none of them are captioning. This means deaf and hard of hearing teenagers will be discovering that they can't watch Smosh on YouTube, unlike their hearing peers! Articles about the upcoming movie have already appeared:

New York Times: http://t.co/Z215XbZkQS
LA Weekly: http://t.co/5Iqs5WyTNq

Smosh has a Spanish language channel AND a French subtitled channel? But no English language closed captions! Spanish and French speakers matter more to Smosh than English-using deaf and hard of hearing people!

Why are we petitioning? We are petitioning because we ran out of things to try to get a response from Smosh. We tried private email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. Nothing worked, and this petition is a last resort!

If you would like to see a video about the need to caption on YouTube, from a YouTube superstar, check out Tyler Oakley's "Dear You Tube" #HearMeOut video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2cBTlLCKjU

Do you want to help get closed captions on Smosh (or other web TV)? Join Caption Action 2 on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/groups/captionaction2. Examples of Smosh videos captioned by volunteers can be seen here: http://captionedwebtv.blogspot.com/2014/05/smosh.html Last but not least, if you post about this petition on social media use the hashtag #CaptionSmosh!