Actress Marlee Matlin Calls Out Delta Air Lines for Lack of Access for Hearing-Impaired Flyers
Actress Marlee Matlin called out Delta on Thursday over the airline’s for her flight’s lack of access for hearing-impaired passengers after she noticed there were no closed captions on the in-flight entertainment.
“Sad to see that my preferred airline, Delta flight 1998 has provisions for various languages and audio description for in-flight entertainment but no closed captions for deaf and hard of hearing flyers,” the deaf Academy Award winner wrote on Twitter.
According to Delta’s website, only select in-flight movies have closed captions, and the feature is not available for the in-flight live TV.
The Air Carrier Access Act prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities during air travel, however, it does not require closed captioning, but does state that there should be “accommodations” for people with hearing impairments.
“The National Association of the Deaf has for decades advocated for new regulations and/or laws to mandate captioning on airplanes, as the Air Carrier Access Act lacks provisions to require captioning,” Howard A. Rosenblum, chief executive officer and director of legal services of the association wrote to NBC News.
“Captioning files exist for EVERY television program and movie that they show on airplanes,” Rosenblum wrote. “There is absolutely no reason for any video to be shown on airlines without captioning given the fact that all such videos have captioning elsewhere on the ground.”
It’s not the first time that Matlin has publicly advocated for closed captioning. In 2014, after years of being challenged by Matlin and the NAD, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon made closed captioning mandatory on all its streaming video offerings. Captioning requirements for streaming video have since expanded.
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