For many
years after my hearing started to diminish I stopped going to movies in the
theater. I watched movies on television
because they were captioned. Later, we
subscribed to Netflix and almost every movie we got from them was
captioned. I quickly learned to check
carefully to make sure the movie had captions before adding a film to our queue after learning the hard way that
there were some, especially those made in Great Britain, which did not.
When we
moved to the city in which we now live, I learned that a large theater had
movies that were open captioned during select showings. Unfortunately the single movie or two chosen
to be captioned often was specifically for children. Unfortunately the movies chosen were shown at
odd and inconvenient times.
Then one day
my son sent me an email based on a Tweet.
This is a world connected by social media. My terrific son learned from the person tweeting
that a nearby theater provides digital captioning devices for virtually every
movie it shows. I was skeptical. I drove to the theater one day and asked an
employee.
“Which films
are captioned?” I pointed to the list of movies above the snack bar.
“All of
them,” he replied.
All I could
say was, “Wow!”
While this
method of viewing movie captions takes a little more work than reading open
captions, it still made the experience of being in the theater a good one. I was able to go to a theater with family and
have that group experience and enjoy a first-run film.
So, how can
you find out if your area theaters offer some form of captioning? Visit a website called Captionfish at www.captionfish.com.
How can you
find out if the Netflix film you can’t wait to see is captioned? Check out phlixie at www.phlixie.com.
Now grab the
popcorn and enjoy!
B. Burton
