Since the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, music and sound have played an important role in the development of film. For the
deaf and hearing-impaired, today's movies remain silent.
If you or someone you know has trouble hearing, there are resources that can help.
The Captioned Media Program, funded by the U.S.
Department of Education and sponsored by the National Association for the
Deaf, provides free rentals of open-captioned educational and general-interest videos to the hearing
impaired, their families and educators.
"Probably the most popular feature of our site has been using the online
catalog and placing orders electronically," said Jason Stark, the company's
distribution and IS manager.
It's also become easier to purchase captioned videos.
LibraryVideo.com
offers this list of their available closed-captioned videos.
Despite the availability of captioned classics, one of the biggest fights
among the hearing impaired community, including the National Association for the Deaf
and its partner organizations, has been to make first-run films available
with captions. Read the NAD's statement on captioning
here. You can
join more than 22,000 who have signed a petition for open-captioned
films at the
Closed Captioning Web.
Deaf and hearing-impaired New Yorkers can check out the Film Society of
Lincoln Center's
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program. To find a
captioned film showing near you, check the
Loews Cineplex Entertainment page, which lists when the
films will be released at Loews theaters across the U.S.
For more information on captioning and its legal ramifications, check out
this reprint from MC Journal:
The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship.
--- M. Magnarelli
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