M A R C H / A P R I L - 1 9 9 8

Captioning
Coming to a Theater Near You?
Titanic has closed captions—but only a few theaters can show them.

When the newspaper reporter asked Richard Ray to try the new movie captioning, Ray was skeptical. It wasn't that he didn't like movies. Ray loves movies. Like thousands of other deaf people, he was frustrated because he did not have equal access to movie theaters.

Ray works for the city of Los Angeles. He coordinates services for deaf and hard of hearing people and makes sure that organizations follow the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). But even the ADA didn't help with movie captioning. In fact, the ADA said that movies do not have to provide captions. This is because when the ADA became law in 1990, there was no technology to provide closed captions in the nation's theaters and hearing people objected to open captions.

Ray tried some of the experimental captioning technologies and didn't like them. "The glasses gave headaches," he said. In fact, he felt nothing worked well.

Still, Ray tried to be hopeful. The new system, Rear Window captioning, was supposed to be different. Ray decided to keep an open mind.

Successful Technology for Deaf and Blind
Ray went to the movies with his boss Mitch Pomerantz. Pomerantz is blind. The same technology that provided Rear Window captioning also would provide Pomerantz with auditory descriptions of the action in the movie. It would make the movie accessible to blind people as well as deaf people.

The two men went to see The Jackal, playing in the General Cinema theater in Sherman Oaks, near Los Angeles.

Their interpreter went with them. Ray was unprepared for what he found. "It was better than closed captioned videos at home," he said. "I was surprised and very pleased." While the hearing and sighted people in the theater watched the movie the same way they always did, Ray watched the movie with his own private set of captions. The captions were reflected from the back wall of the theater onto a small clear screen at his seat.

Next to him sat Pomerantz. Pomerantz listened to the movie through earphones, taking in the visual portions of the movie through an audio track that described actions he couldn't see. "It was ironic for a deaf person and a blind person to share the same experience," said Ray. Ray and Pomerantz were among the 50 people, most of them deaf, who saw The Jackal with the new captioning technology, said Judith Navoy, Project Manager for the Motion Picture Access Project at WGBH, which developed the technology.

The experiment was a small one, but it spread hope among deaf, hard of hearing, and blind people throughout the country.

When the second captioned movie, Titanic, rolled in to the Sherman Oaks theater, the response was electric.

"We probably got as many as 50 people in a single day," said Navoy.

Bill Smith, who has managed the theater for 18 years, was overwhelmed. "As a person who has not experienced being close to people with hearing or seeing problems, I was astonished with both the number and the emotion of the response," he said. "People drove hours to come to the theater to see those captions."

Although both Navoy and Smith said that the captioning was not done to increase theater profits, it clearly had a positive impact on attendance. Ray returned twice to see Titanic. He saw the movie once with deaf friends and once with hearing friends. "It was excellent," he said.

Rear Window Captioning Technology Toehold
The technology is called "Rear Window Captioning," probably because it shows captions on a small plastic screen the shape of a tiny car rear window.

"The captions were easy to read," said Bruce Gross, President of the World Recreation Association of the Deaf, who saw the Titanic with about 10 other deaf people.

"I was able to sit anywhere I wanted....I put the reflector in front of me where I sat down. The rod of the reflector was adjusted to the drink holder next to my seat."

He adjusted the caption screen several times before he felt comfortable.

"Most of us thought the system was wonderful," he said.

But there are obstacles to the quick spread of the highly praised system. Now it is in only a few theaters. In addition to the Sherman Oaks theater, it is also in a few specialty theaters, said Navoy, including the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and 25 locations in Disney World.

The biggest problem may be the cost. It will cost most theaters $15,000 to install the technology for captioning and audio.

And movies must be captioned earlier in the distribution process.

General comments may be sent to: Ken.Kurlychek@gallaudet.edu
Last modified May 21, 1998
Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved
Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center

Gallaudet University 800 Florida Ave. NE Washington, DC 20002-3695