Recently I wrote about the nice evening I had watching Phantom of the Opera live with open captions. The reason the Paramount theater in Seattle finally tried captioning was because of the gentle encouragement of a deaf lawyer who has made accessibility for the deaf his number one priority through an organization called WASH-CAP. That night the theater was packed with several deaf people in attendance. People like my husband, Perry, and I who normally wouldn’t go because I can’t hear. Later Perry admitted he had benefited from the captions himself. He has a severe hearing loss on one side, so I wasn’t surprised. But some of the other hearing spouses also agreed it was nice to have that captioning. ALL agreed it was wonderful to be able to go out to a musical with their hard-of-hearing/deaf spouses.
Perry told me he had heard that a suit had been filed against the Redskins over lack of captioning during their games. He has wanted the Seahawks to caption their games ever since he saw a captioned Cardinals game in Phoenix at the University of Arizona stadium. Perry, along with our two sons, have been avid fans and season ticket holders of the Seahawks for over a decade. So Perry wrote to the Seahawks a few years back to suggest they include captioning on their screens like the Cardinals do. No response. Perry explained that not only is captioning in the best interest of deaf fans, but he believes hearing fans would benefit too. Perry complains that he and our sons often miss announcements when the crowds cheer. Since he isn’t deaf he didn’t pursue captioning with Qwest field and the Seahawks, but he is happy that deaf people have taken up this cause in Washington DC. He hopes the trend spreads across the country. Soonest.
Like Perry, deaf Washington DC fans got the cold shoulder from the Redskins when they initially asked for captioning a couple years ago. Apparently the Redskins (and the Seahawks) didn’t realize they were in violation of Title III of American Disability Act (ADA ) adopted way back back in 1990. Because the Redskins refused to make their games accessible to deaf people, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD ) eventually got involved, and filed a class action complaint on behalf of all deaf Redskin fans.
What is Title III anyway? This is the part of the ADA that says public businesses must provide equal access to people with disabilities. By federal law, public businesses may not discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability. Public businesses must provide accommodations to make their services equally accessible to all. And that’s fair. Because deaf people pay county, state, sales or income taxes like everyone else, they have a right to equal access of stadiums and concert halls built with their tax dollars.
Up until recently the entertainment industry has been way behind the times when it comes to accommodating deaf people. Back in 1990, theaters and stadiums across the country claimed that forced captioning would be a “hardship” to them. Those who wrote the ADA agreed for some reason I’ll never understand. Hollywood and sports are two of the biggest money-making industries earning billions of dollars annually. I don’t know how much captioning cost back in 1990, maybe it was expensive. But I do know that it was possible to caption then, because the Seattle opera has been subtitled since at least 1985 when I bought my first season tickets. Opera has never made as much money as football, so I believe the ‘hardship’ argument was exceedingly lame. Nevertheless, Hollywood and movie theaters everywhere, the NFL, the NHL, and NBA were exempted from compliance at that time, even though they all had to install wheelchair ramps, braille on all their walls and special restrooms. Deaf needs have been ignored all this time. Things have changed so much in the past eighteen years that is it now extremely cheap and easy to caption theaters and stadiums everywhere. There’s no excuse for multi-million-billion dollar industries like the Redskins/NFL to ignore the ADA. So a complaint was filed and the Redskins were rightly ordered to caption their games for the deaf.
Just for the heck of it, I looked up other court cases involving the Redskins over the past few years. Here’s one. Back in 2002, the Redskins sued the Journal Newspapers for $500,00 in damages. Why? Because the Journal held a contest to give away two season tickets. The Redskins claimed the Journal didn’t have the right to give away its own two tickets. Read about it here. Lame!
Guess how much the NAD asked for in ‘damages’ when the Redskins failed to comply with Title III of the ADA?
Nothin!
That’s right. All they wanted was access so Deaf people could participate fully. Paul Singleton explained that with captioning he would know what happened when players got ejected off the field. He could also go get a hotdog at the concession stand and watch the game on TV like everyone else in line– something he can’t do now.
Is that too much to ask?
His tax dollars paid for the building, the seats, those big screens, and the TVs. He pays the same amount for his ticket as everyone else. Shouldn’t he get the same service?
I’m betting most Redskin fans with perfect hearing will like the captions too.
Filed under: deafness, hearing impaired, hearing loss | Tagged: Accessibility, accommodations
Very informative post, Kim. I will have to look into what the situation is here in Illinois. I have never been a big sports fan so it hasn’t been important to me. But you’ve opened my eyes to the fact that it’s a matter of fairness. Sarah
As I understand it the games at Redskins FedEx field has been captioned all that time, the deaf fan wanted more than just captioning of the game, they wanted EVERYTHING to be captioned, including everything that comes out of the PA system and even the songs that the Cheerleaders were performing to. Even Nationals balpark have been captioning their games for some time now. It is not like the games were not captioned to begin with.
Dept of Justice lawsuits do ask for punitive damages when it comes to ADA. I do hope that no one got any of that from the latest lawsuit. While I’m not certain if any money came out of the latest ruling in regards to captioning everything at the Redskins Field, many ADA lawsuits do involve money, although usually not in extremely high amounts.
Hi Candy,
I’m going by what Paul Singleton said– that he misses announcer’s explanations why players have been ejected because announcer comments are not captioned. Also the TV’s by the concession lines weren’t captioned either, so deaf people miss the game when they get up to get a beer or hotdog. I’ve been in this situation many times myself Candy. None of the professional games here in Seattle are captioned in the stadiums–Seahawks, Mariners and Sonics were never captioned. I am always asking my husband and sons what happened.
As far as I know, this suit didn’t involve money, but if you know differently I’d appreciate hearing about it. Wouldn’t change my opinion either way. The Redskins make TONS of money and have sued for damages over frivolously in the past. Serves them right.
Normally an ADA suit only involves money if damages incurred– (i.e. public restaurant doesn’t offer wheelchair accessible bathroom causing extreme pain and discomfort to a patron.) Generally people who file claims are after accommodation only. Usually the claims are filed with the Office of Civil Rights initially. The OCR tries to mediate between both parties by educating BOTH of the ADA laws. If that doesn’t work, then a person might file a private suit and claim damages– IF there were any. That’s hard to prove, especially when Deaf. I suppose they could sue for reimbursement of their ticket monies? Seems fair to me.
Thanks for commenting. I always enjoy hearing from you.