From a
young girl portraying Dorothy to the young woman fighting to watch Dorothy on
the big screen, Marlee Matlin's love for The
Wizard of Oz would hopefully be shared with her daughter. After having fought for the right to watch
said movie 19 years prior, watching the movie as it celebrates its 70th
anniversary should have been easy. In
fact, Netflix was going to make watching the movie even easier by providing
access to the movie online. When Marlee
and her five year old daughter sat down to watch the movie, Marlee was caught a
bit off guard. She would not be able to
enjoy the movie with her daughter. There
was no closed captioning on Netflix.
At first
Marlin believed that there may be an issue with the technology. She thought that the technology for internet
closed captioning did not exist at that time.
She was appalled to find that the technology did, in fact, exist. Actually, the problem came down to the fact
that content providers did not feel the need, push or desire to provide this
accommodation. Suddenly, Matlin felt
like she was back 20 years earlier when she could not partake in the mainstream
events.
As Matlin
does not accept disappointment and unfair actions, she immediately began to
fight. Marlee again appealed to many
members of congress lobbying for the deaf and hard of hearing. She used many of her personal experiences to
appeal to the law makers. Specifically,
Matlin remembered not being able to watch her performances and interviews from
"Dancing with the Stars" because ABC posted them on the internet
without captions. Further, she recounted
the ironic experience of being unable to see the broadcast of the Helen Keller
statue because the event was streamed on CNN without captions.
In the
end, Matlin, yet again, found victory for those who are deaf or hard of
hearing. She was a part of the new law
that requires web video to be captioned.
Further, the law requires that anything previously captioned must be
converted for internet compatibility.
In a
speech after lobbying in Washington, Matlin stated:
In the
end, it’s not really rocket
science. It’s simply about making sure that millions upon millions of
Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, or otherwise differently abled are not
shut out because broadband service and Internet content is not accessible, not
available, or not affordable. As I said
earlier, for whatever reason, it seems that all the hard work that we did 20
years ago has virtually disappeared when it comes to updating access standards
for broadband and the Internet. Imagine
Neal Armstrong watching a re-broadcast 20 years later, in 1989, of his first
steps on the moon, only to find his words which echoed across the globe, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” were no longer there – erased, as if he had never
been to the moon. That’s how taking closed captions out of broadcast content now
being shown on the Internet feels to millions of people like myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment