Finally Able To Enjoy a Movie

I’ve written several times in the past about captioned movies, or the lack thereof, in our area. Our movie theatre landscape is controlled primarily by Regal Theatres, and not until about a year and a half ago did any of the theatres show a movie captioned for the Deaf. And that particular theatre was not very close to our home.

We’ve missed first run movies that the kids would really liked to have seen had there been captions. We even tried using an iPad to provide the captions, but with little luck for the newest of movies. We even, with the help of our state’s Disability Protection and Advocacy organization, cajoled Regal theatres to show the newest Harry Potter movie captioned the first weekend it opened. But that was the only time they did anything like that. But things do actually seem to be improving.

Some (a few) of the Regal Theatres in our city are showing first run movies and providing captioning through a device that looks like a pair of glasses. According to a website that discusses the partnership between Sony and Regal:

“Sony is working with American theater chain Regal Entertainment to introduce a new kind of glasses technology that can display closed captions for those with hearing problems. The new Access Glasses can show text in six different languages, which is then placed directly in the viewer's field of vision so that they don't have to constantly look at the bottom of the screen. The information is streamed wirelessly, and the location of the text can be adjusted to make things more comfortable. The glasses also include features for the blind or visually impaired, as they can be used alongside headphones to provide extra audio detail about just what's happening on screen.

Regal — the largest theater chain in the US — started rolling the Access Glasses out this month, and expects to have them available in "practically all of its fully digitized theater locations" by early 2013.”

Chip and Ronnie went to see the movie Prometheus this past weekend and used the glasses. They worked very well, but currently don’t work with 3D movies. This is definitely a huge step forward for Regal, and a very welcome technology that will allow my family and many others to enjoy movies every bit as much as the Hearing community!

Captioning on Demand

Finding closed captioned movies at the theatre is difficult in my area, to say the least. There is only one theatre that shows captioned movies, and the movies are never at the theater until weeks after the opening shows. For example, it took about 4 weeks before Eclipse was available with captioning, and then the show times were not such that we could go.

But Chip, my ever resourceful son, has found a solution - a solution that will allow Ronnie to go to any movie at any theatre and have captioning available.

Chip found an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch application that will display captioning (or subtitles if one doesn't need the captioning as it is presented to the Deaf). He's checked dozens of movies, including first run ones, and captioning is available!

Here are some screen shots. First you enter the name of the movie you wish to see captions for and perform a search:



Any matches show up and you select the correct movie:



And here is an example of the captions. It's very similar to the technology used in rear-window captioning (which the theatre near us does not offer).



Ronnie can use it in a movie theatre or at home, as pictured here. Chip set his iPad up right next to Ronnie's TV.



How cool is this, and how brilliant is my geeky son??!!!

Wheel Bright Bach (We'll Be Right Back)

I'm a reluctant user of closed captioning now. I've always been deaf in my left ear, but had good enough hearing in my right that I could hear television. But, as my children have pointed out, in recent months I have had the volume turned up loudly enough for our next door neighbors to hear what we are watching. So, I have turned on closed captioning.

It seems as if there are two type of captioning. With one type it seems the captioners (is that what they are called?) have been given a script ahead of time and have entered the captioning. That kind of captioning follows closely with the spoken word - not much of a delay. The second type seems to be 'live' captioning - in other words, the captioners are entering the words just as they are spoken. There is, of course, a delay with this type. But with both types, there are so many errors that it is often difficult to follow along with the TV show.

I can understand to a degree the errors in live captioning, although I would prefer a lot less. But, it's tough to understand errors when the captioners have the scripts ahead of time.

Maybe I just don't know enough about captioning, but so far, it has not been a great experience. So much of the actual show is missed or misinterpreted. I'm really disappointed. So much for universal access.