Category: Advocacy

A group of deaf entertainment industry professionals has called out the CBS All Access series “The Stand” for not casting a deaf actor in a deaf role.

The new adaptation of Stephen King’s epic includes a deaf character, Nick Andros, who is played by a hearing actor, Henry Zaga. Another hearing actor, Rob Lowe, played the character in the 1990s “The Stand” miniseries.

“As a Black Deaf filmmaker/TV Creator, advocate of diversity & inclusion, acting instructor, & creator/owner of #Deaftalent campaign, I believe in change. It shouldn’t be that difficult to cast the right person for the role,” activist and owner of the #DeafTalent® trademark, Jade Bryan, wrote on Twitter.

The tweet included a letter signed by industry professionals calling out the series for its lack of inclusion and a refusal to watch or support the show.

Read the rest at https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/12/18/the-stand-deaf-professionals-sign-letter-calling-out-cbs-show/3956524001.

I need closed captions. I don’t really care what you call it – “open captions” or “closed captions” or “subtitles” – I am simply talking about the text transcription that is the bottom of a screen that shows what people are saying. For the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to call them “captions” here.

With captions, I can participate in classes, meetings, hangouts. I can watch movies. Without them, I am stuck in trying to figure  what is going on. I get hearing fatigue from the focus, then headaches and complete drains of energy. All that, and I didn’t even understand.

I’ve tried time and again to get them with Zoom. At best though, captions on Zoom required a third-party on board, which is really difficult to handle when you are not the host, not to mention when you don’t have money to pay for the captioning subscription or to hire a CART captionist.

All of that is of no concern anymore, as… (drumroll, please!)

FREE ZOOM HAS AUTOMATIC CAPTIONS
Zoom has finally integrated free, live captions with any plan.

The only thing that needs to be done is some enabling clicks from the back end. ANYONE CAN GET THIS. It’s free, and just by enabling it, you embed the captions directly onto the screen, below the presenter and participants.

It’s really a game changer and it’s easy!

Instructions (and rest of the story) at https://www.meriahnichols.com/how-to-enable-free-zoom-captions.

 

** ASLized by Feta Fernsler, Delaware Association of the Deaf.  **