3 ms·

>According to the lawsuit, the ADA requires that all “places of entertainment” provide “full and equal enjoyment” for people with disabilities. I'm sure it's l

by dodo53 15y ago

>According to the lawsuit, the ADA requires that all “places of entertainment” provide “full and equal enjoyment” for people with disabilities. I'm sure it's lost in translation from legalese, but that seems like a really broad requirement. How can you claim full and equal enjoyment of deaf people at a nightclub say? Googled the act and tried to read it (http://www.ada.gov/statute.html http://www.ada.gov/statute.html) but I can't parse it. Edit: removed the bit where I said surely captions aren't hard - article links to netflix saying it is (http://gigaom.com/video/why-netflix-doesnt-offer-subtitles-or-closed-captions/ http://gigaom.com/video/why-netflix-doesnt-offer-subtitles-o...)

stonemetal 15y ago
Easy, if you have captions available, if not then it is a bit more difficult. They have been working on it and most of their streams do support it.
- gkjam 15y ago
  Only a third of their streams support it, and they have been "working on it" for a long time. Working on it isn't good enough, you need to make the experience accessible to disabled individuals, period. That's the law, and rightly so. All their DVDs contain subtitle options, so the content is there. They can make the content accessible by providing a separate "burned in" copy of the content with subtitles for those who need it, and they could have done that a long time ago.
m0nastic 15y ago
NetFlix has been trying to implement captions[1], it's actually a lot more challenging then you'd think (with a library as large as NetFlix's). They've been rolling it out slowly the past few months, but I'll at least give them credit for trying. I had never noticed the lack of closed captioning on online video until I dated a deaf girl a few years ago, and then you sort of notice how much content exists that is suboptimal when you can't hear. [1] http://blog.netflix.com/2011/02/30-of-netflix-streaming-content-has.html http://blog.netflix.com/2011/02/30-of-netflix-streaming-cont...
- underwater 15y ago
  Hopefully this will change over the next few years as voice recognition improves.
  - woodson 15y ago
    Closed captioning often requires more than that, e.g. for transcribing important non-speech events. Nevertheless, progress in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition might help a lot, with subsequent editing. Actually, I think I'd like to work on that :). Ah, so little time..
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  I notice it every time I'm linked to a news story that's only in a video format. I'm literate, thanks, I don't need an announcer slowly explaining things to me.
  - masterzora 15y ago
    This. A million times this. I don't understand the push that's been made on the web wherein content that would be perfectly usable as normal plaintext & images becomes videos. It is really easy for me to move freely spatially and really difficult for me to move freely temporally and this is no different on the web. Moreover, it is really easy for me to randomly access a single sentence of text and actually pretty damn difficult for me to do the same with a sentence of spoken word (and this is before you account for my minor hearing difficulties).
    - haberman 15y ago
      > I don't understand the push that's been made on the web wherein content that would be perfectly usable as normal plaintext & images becomes videos. My guess is that it's better for advertising because they can show you ads that cannot be skipped before getting to the content.
      - 15y ago
xbryanx 15y ago
This is why there are devices that help caption public performances like the opera and scheduled sign language interpreters. The Boston Opera provides a great specific example. http://www.bostonoperahouseonline.com/Accessibility.htm http://www.bostonoperahouseonline.com/Accessibility.htm It's not an overly broad requirement it's an appropriately just one.
- cdcarter 15y ago
  For whatever it's worth, this is the Boston Opera House, a venue usually used for Broadway tours, not an actual opera company. Boston Lyric Opera (arguably the largest opera company in Boston) does have similar accessibility though.

by dodo53 15y ago

stonemetal 15y ago

Easy, if you have captions available, if not then it is a bit more difficult. They have been working on it and most of their streams do support it.

gkjam 15y ago
Only a third of their streams support it, and they have been "working on it" for a long time. Working on it isn't good enough, you need to make the experience accessible to disabled individuals, period. That's the law, and rightly so. All their DVDs contain subtitle options, so the content is there. They can make the content accessible by providing a separate "burned in" copy of the content with subtitles for those who need it, and they could have done that a long time ago.

m0nastic 15y ago

NetFlix has been trying to implement captions[1], it's actually a lot more challenging then you'd think (with a library as large as NetFlix's). They've been rolling it out slowly the past few months, but I'll at least give them credit for trying. I had never noticed the lack of closed captioning on online video until I dated a deaf girl a few years ago, and then you sort of notice how much content exists that is suboptimal when you can't hear. [1] http://blog.netflix.com/2011/02/30-of-netflix-streaming-content-has.html http://blog.netflix.com/2011/02/30-of-netflix-streaming-cont...

underwater 15y ago
Hopefully this will change over the next few years as voice recognition improves.
- woodson 15y ago
  Closed captioning often requires more than that, e.g. for transcribing important non-speech events. Nevertheless, progress in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition might help a lot, with subsequent editing. Actually, I think I'd like to work on that :). Ah, so little time..
pavel_lishin 15y ago
I notice it every time I'm linked to a news story that's only in a video format. I'm literate, thanks, I don't need an announcer slowly explaining things to me.
- masterzora 15y ago
  This. A million times this. I don't understand the push that's been made on the web wherein content that would be perfectly usable as normal plaintext & images becomes videos. It is really easy for me to move freely spatially and really difficult for me to move freely temporally and this is no different on the web. Moreover, it is really easy for me to randomly access a single sentence of text and actually pretty damn difficult for me to do the same with a sentence of spoken word (and this is before you account for my minor hearing difficulties).
  - haberman 15y ago
    > I don't understand the push that's been made on the web wherein content that would be perfectly usable as normal plaintext & images becomes videos. My guess is that it's better for advertising because they can show you ads that cannot be skipped before getting to the content.
    - 15y ago

xbryanx 15y ago

This is why there are devices that help caption public performances like the opera and scheduled sign language interpreters. The Boston Opera provides a great specific example. http://www.bostonoperahouseonline.com/Accessibility.htm http://www.bostonoperahouseonline.com/Accessibility.htm It's not an overly broad requirement it's an appropriately just one.

cdcarter 15y ago
For whatever it's worth, this is the Boston Opera House, a venue usually used for Broadway tours, not an actual opera company. Boston Lyric Opera (arguably the largest opera company in Boston) does have similar accessibility though.