Netflix, Time Warner sued by deaf groups

[The Northerner]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An advocacy group for deaf Americans sued Netflix on Friday for failing to provide closed captioning on its streaming online television and movies.

The National Association of the Deaf, in a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts federal court, accused Netflix of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by not providing the deaf with equal access to its "watch instantly" digital video.

"While streaming (video) provides more access to entertainment to the general public, it threatens to be yet another barrier to people who are deaf and hard of hearing," the lawsuit said.

Another advocacy group and three individuals filed a separate suit on Wednesday against Time Warner. Both lawsuits seek injunctions requiring the companies to provide closed captions on all streaming video content.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110617/media_nm/us_netflix_lawsuit

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. What? They don't offer subtitles on movies? WTF?

If I watch an English language movie without subtitles, I understand about 75% of the words. And that simply won't do.

[SolutionisSolidarity]

6. They offer subtitles on some movies, but not all or even most.

nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. That, quite frankly, sucks aye-aye balls.

[SolutionisSolidarity]

12. It does. My SO watches everything with captions, when possible.

It's kind of irritating that they can stream the captions, but they don't have them for so much of their instant content. If you can get past that, I can't recommend Netflix enough, though. The streaming service is 8 or 9 dollars a month, with a fairly large selection to choose from. I cancelled cable over 6 months ago, and haven't missed it yet.

[drm604]

2. My brother, who has a slight hearing loss, has complained about this.

He usually turns on the close captions when he watches TV and he has Netflix but does sometimes have difficulty enjoying it because of the lack of captions.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[scheming daemons]

4. Why aren't they suing movie theatres for the same reason?

You don't get closed captioning in the theatres.

[recoveringrepublican]

5. Your wrong. All theaters offer different options

Many are just "amplifiers" which help with nothing for the more severely deafened like myself. But more and more are offering rear view captions (basically one gets a little screen for individual CC) and many Big theaters offer Open Captioning, which is captioning right on the screen. The population is aging, and vanity or not, many will not hear, why this continues to be a problem I have no idea.

[OnlinePoker]

7. This was on the Netflix Blog 2 years ago

http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitles.html

I read on another site that Netflix offers subtitles on many titles when you stream through PCs, but the issue is when people go through XBoxes or Playstations. The technology is different for each format.

[Electric Monk]

10. Informative post, thanks. nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. All DVDs & Blu-Rays come with subtitles. There's open formats for subtitle files for video files.

Bad subtitling, and lack of subtitles, in a paid streaming service, has no excuse. It's plain incompetence.

[Dappleganger]

14. +10000

[Tesha]

15. Actually, it's hit or miss.

DVD movies are pretty good about offering English
subtitles but it's still not 100%. Some just offer
subtitles in a foreign language, e.g., Spanish.

DVD TV shows, on the other hand, often don't offer
"DVD Subtitles" *EVEN WHEN THE TV PROGRAM OFFERS
CLOSED CAPTIONING*; this has always struck me as
weird.

We watch a lot of Brit TV via DVD (Inspector Morse,
Lewis, Midsomer Murders, and the like and
we've often found this to be true; even if the Closed
Captioning is present, the DVD Subtitles aren't.

Tesha

[idiotgardener]

16. That's not even close to true.

Much of the older stuff doesn't have subtitles or closed captioning available. Some of the newer stuff only has captions in other languages.

[ohheckyeah]

9. Half the time the closed

captioning is so bad you can't make heads or tails out of it any way. Who the hell does the closed captioning? It's just sad.

[Dappleganger]

13. Good, IMO they have had more than enough time to resolve this issue.

I have a HOH friend who wrestles with compliance issues constantly, and I don't think that Netflix has shown good faith in getting this fixed. Also, the US gov site has fallen behind as they don't do CC on live presidential video from their website (not every deaf person has a tv) and they have given the same BS excuses. Unfortunately, it seems like the only time they really find a solution is when they are dragged off to court.