Hear, Hear
Peg on Apr 25 2008 at 3:42 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Law, Media, Peg's Page, regulation
One of my girlfriends is smart as a whip and a talented artist to boot. Cathy is also hard of hearing.
While Cathy can read lips and she also has a device that allows her to converse in very small groups, she is unable to hear in most other settings. Last year, the two of us attended a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani. As we watched Rudy live on TV, I quietly “translated” what he was saying for Cathy. Many of the other people in attendance thus realized how unfortunate it was that there weren’t closed captions for Cathy and people like her.
Elise Knopf, of the Minnesota Commission Serving Deaf and Hard of Hearing People wants the state of Minnesota to pass a law making it mandatory to have closed captions in political ads. As you all know, my philosophy is to urge small government, and I’m not quite certain that people should be forced to include closed captions. Nevertheless, I am very sure that the captions should be included in these ads - not to mention most everything else on TV! Cathy has explained to me that the cost to do so is minimal - and that the captions can be invisible to those who do not need them.
Including those among us who cannot hear well or at all has a simple solution. Let’s apply it.
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