Chapter 27 really made me think. I think this ordeal with closed captioning to be very interesting. Before taking this course and learning more about ASL, I just figured every Deaf person could read and that the closed captioning was nothing but helpful. I don't usually turn it on because it distracts me a little, I think that if there were interpreters on every channel people would get a little annoyed. I do think it would be great for deaf people to be able to have any channel signed to them in ASL. It would be nice if there was a way to have this ASL visible to only the Deaf, like the idea with the decoder boxes and micro chips discussed in this chapter.
The only time I ever watch television with captioning is at the gym or at a restaurant. Working out at the gym (on those rare occasions) is when I notice the most captioning errors. From a Deaf ASL user's standpoint I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to want to watch the news to find out what is going on in the world around you only to have jumbled short, often misspelled captioning. The event of 9/11 is what comes to mind for me, I was frightened and confused and I could hear the news reports. If I was Deaf and not very comfortable with English, 9/11 and the days that followed would have been even scarier and more confusing.
The matter of movie theaters having closed captioning is another tough and controversial matter. I think that theaters should be aware of the Deaf community and offer movies with captioning. Maybe not every theatre but atleast those in larger cities.
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