Many deaf and hard of hearing people rely on closed captions or subtitles when watching movies or other videos. While most television stations and streaming services now provide closed captions or subtitles, accessibility for people with hearing loss is woefully inadequate at cinemas.
The larger cinemas in Australia sometimes provide a closed captioning device called a ‘CaptiView’, which is a large bulky piece of equipment that you put in the drink holder and awkwardly place in front of you. During the movie you have to constantly glance away from the screen at the device, which displays a line or two of text at a time in glaring green LED. It means you barely get to watch what’s on screen.
And that’s assuming the device is working, which it often isn’t. And even when it is, up to half of the dialogue is usually missing.
It’s simply not good enough. We want open caption screenings in cinemas, where the closed captions are displayed on the big screen, just like on televisions or streaming services.
Village Cinemas has begun making Open Captions screenings available, which we gladly welcome. Their biggest rival, Hoyts, seems to have no plans to do the same and are refusing to respond to requests for comments.
It appears that Hoyts is afraid Open Captions screenings would scare off patrons from attending films. We believe this is patently absurd, given their popularity overseas, the popularisation of animated gifs with captions, and the widespread habit of watching muted videos on your phone in public. Captions and subtitles are ubiquitous today, and are widely accessed even by people without hearing loss.
This is also not to suggest we demand every cinema screening be an open caption screening. But we do demand that at the very least, there are dedicated screenings.
Hoyts must provide accessibility for the approximately 3.6 million Australians with hearing loss - 14.5% of the population. That’s just about one in every seven Australians. This is not some niche, rare condition - despite what Hoyts may think.
We want to show that open caption screenings are not to be feared, and that even people without accessibility needs would welcome open caption screenings.
Please also sign the petition at change.org: http://chng.it/WtjvLygBRh