The United States Department of Transportation (DOT), after four years of development, finally issued a ruling to make closed captioning mandatory in all US airports. As of October 5th 2015, closed captioning is now obligatory on all televisions and audio-visual displays in US airports that receive federal funding and experience at least 10,000 flights per annum. The full ruling can be viewed here.
Authorities are now beginning to acknowledge the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing and inevitably, other countries throughout the world will follow in the footsteps of the United States. We asked the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) if this new ruling should be applied to all public transportation to which they replied: “The NAD’s position is that the DOT policy on visual access to all auditory information in the form of captioning should apply to all means of public transport”.
It seems like this DOT ruling is the beginning of more initiatives to come, the NAD informed us that they “are advocating with the Department of Transportation (DOT) to mandate online requests for airline accommodations, pre-boarding options, visually accessible gate communications, and captioned in-flight entertainment”.
Earlier this summer, as America celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the NAD released 25 videos that shared tips for deaf and hard of hearing people to better understand the ADA. The NAD is developing a video series to raise awareness about rights and responsibilities. Additionally, the NAD continue to lobby at the federal level to ensure full access for citizens who are deaf and hard of hearing.
In Europe, charity Action on Hearing Loss (formerly RNID) launched a campaign throughout the UK this summer (Subtitle It!) for the wider availability of access services on TV, notably in on-demand subtitling – including on catch-up TV and online film services. The report is entitled ‘Progress on pause: spelling out the case for subtitles on on-demand services’. In this report, the charity has found that more than two thirds of those who pay for subscriptions would switch their TV service providers if more on-demand content with subtitles were available elsewhere.
At Haymillian, we actively advocate for accessibility and equal rights for deaf and hard of hearing people. We push awareness in particular in the media and entertainment industry where we work with a number of content owners and distributors. We are also involved with the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), as well as advocating for accessibility services through speaker engagements at key conferences and via our social media activities.
While it’s clear that more and more authorities are beginning to take action in favour of the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people, there still remains a lot to be done in the form of awareness and worldwide recognition toward equal rights for all. Haymillian believes that in today’s world where everything is available through on-screen displays; each citizen has the equal right to access the same information and to enjoy the same audio-visual experience. After all access services are a basic human right for the 400 million people worldwide who are deaf and hard of hearing, without which they cannot live their lives to the fullest.
