Summer is here and some of us are spending some hard earned money to take a vacation. Some of those hard earned travellers are also hearing impaired and are consumers of the airline and cruise industry.
36 million Americans are hearing impaired and/or deaf, yet we are still struggling to obtain captioning on television, the internet, movie theatres, broadway shows and many other places. Within the next few weeks, I’ll be flying several planes and cruising Alaska. However, I can bet my airline ticket that the shows and movies I will be entertained by, will not be captioned.
So, what’s a customer to do? I am a full ticket paying customer who just wants to enjoy the flight and cruise like everyone else. I’m not deaf but watching a show is more enjoyable if I can understand what’s being said and the only way I can get the speech is through captions. I feel as though I spend half my life advocating and the other half is spent learning about social media. I can’t help but say to myself, 36 million Americans are hearing impaired, why aren’t we all out there advocating for universal captioning?
Then again, could you imagine if we all showed up at the White House lawn to make a statement? Time to speak up. This country has allowed the silence to take over. The more silent we are, the less power we have to make change. Help advocate for captioning. How? If you have a favorite show on t.v. thats not captioned, write the producers of the show. If your favorite show is captioned, write a letter thanking them. Join the battle by joining CCAC http://www.ccacaptioning.org/ and get informed.
Educating yourself as a consumer is the most important thing. We deserve it.
