Locked Out of Language

The article I focused on for this post is from OZY, an online news resource. It focuses on the lack of teaching sign language to those who are deaf or hard at hearing throughout the world. The one main issue that the article focuses on is the reliance on technology versus the visual language of sign language. One significant quote from the article is, “Only 2 percent of deaf children receive their education in sign language, according tot he global partnership for education.” This quote is important because it is a learning barrier for this children. This could really affect their intelligence levels as they get older if they aren’t taught in a way that they understand. There are other important data and statistics that the article had listen. One other quote that is very important is, “On average, deaf children with cochlear implants demonstrated lower receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge than children with full hearing, according to a 2016 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education.” This is important because instead of relying on sign language these technological advances which still demonstrate lower knowledge for the children are being relied on. The article highlighted a huge percentage of Danish children to emphasis that instead of going the visual aid route they went the technology, easy, and not as effective route. “Ninety-eight percent of Danish children who are deaf receive cochlear implants (about 2 percent can’t receive them for medical reasons), and Denmark no longer offers sign language instruction to any children at all, Hauser says.” Overall the focus of this article is to highlight the importance of visual language over top of reliance of technology.

Netflix’s Lack of Dialogue

When looking into the faulty and incorrect closed captioning on different platforms and videos, Netflix appeared on numerous sources. This was especially in reference to their television show, Queer Eye. A deaf man, Rogan Shannon, made a point online through a Youtube video and numerous tweets pointing out Netflix’s mistakes. Tweet by @shan_no_says (24 Jun): “Okay, @netflix. I want to know why you don’t caption every single word. I can see what people are saying not matching up with the captions. Also, pardon me, but DO NOT FUCKING CENSOR PEOPLE. I want to know what is said word. for. word. That’s the whole fucking point of captions.” He makes it very clear that he wants to know every single thing that is going on audibly and thats the whole point of closed captioning in the first place. Netflix responded a few days later to his tweet regarding their closed captioning, and more specifically the closed captioning on their show Queer Eye. Tweet by @Netflixhelps 28 Jun): “We’ve heard about the caption issues on the service, specifically for @QueerEye. After looking into it, there’s lots of dialogue missing from the Fab 5 that shouldn’t be. We’re fixing it. In some cases, we do bleep incidental profanity from our unscripted series.”  Shannon was glad that they responded and he is hopeful that they will follow through with what they said and he wants to be aware of what steps are going to be taken to keep subtitles the way they should be on their shows. The fact that Netflix responded to Shannons’ comment means that this is an actual issue. This article is from 2018 and there is a chance that Netflix has started working on this issue, but there is still a long way to go to ensure that the deaf and hard at hearing communities get the best viewing experience. This is especially in regards to automatic closed captioning versus the power of real human services creating the subtitling for shows.