Captionfish is the leading search engine for captioned movies showing in theatres throughout the United States. Captioned movies offer people with hearing and visual disabilities a way to enjoy the cinema. The website lists movies that are showing in opened captioning, Rear Window captioning, CaptiView closed captioning, USL Closed Caption System, foreign language subtitles and Descriptive Audio. On the home page of the website, you can filter the type of closed captioning you are looking for and find a specific type to fit your needs. The website also offers a description of each of the different types of captioning that American theatres offer.

You choose a city in the United States and Captionfish quickly loads a comprehensive list of theatres with closed caption capabilities within 60 miles. Captionfish will list the theatre and what type of captioning is available. By default, the list is in order by theater location, but there’s an option to view the list by title of movie instead. It also lists the  time and motion picture rating of the movie. The website even links to the movie trailer with open captioning, written summary of the film and a list of every theatre in the United States where it is showing with captioning.

The “Theater Directory” tab of the website allows people to see all the theatres in the United States that show captioned movies. Once again, you can select your home city and it will list all the theatres within 60 miles that offer some form of captioning. The webpage automatically lists the names, addresses and phone numbers of the theaters, too.

Captionfish offers other features for more convenient searching. The website is a comprehensive schedule of all movies with captions in the United States. It also provides a list of upcoming movies that will be available with captioning. To make it even easier to find captioned movies, you can create an account with Captionfish and the site will email you when a captioned movie is available in a city near you.

Closed Captioning

Closed Captioning

Netflix, Starz, and Blockbuster On Demand all offer movies and TV episodes that you can “watch instantly” by hooking your television up to the internet using a specified device.  While these companies have made movies more accessible to a larger audience, none of them currently provide Closed Captioning for the hearing impaired on their streaming movies and TV episodes.

When researching this topic, I came across comments from several uninformed individuals who didn’t see why this was important.  According to the Deafness Research Foundation,

Approximately 17 percent (36 million) of American adults report some degree of hearing loss.

That’s a pretty significant audience!

A representative from Netflix blogged in June that Closed Captioning is in the works for their streaming videos, but would probably not be available until at least 2010.  A Comcast representative recently replied to a frustrated customer with a link to the FCC’s stance on Closed Captioning.  According to her, all video content is supposed to be captioned after January 2006 unless it contains specific exceptions.

These exceptions that allow companies like Netflix to be exempt from providing Closed Captioning include late night programs, public service announcements lasting less than 10 minutes, local educational programs, and

Any video programming or video programming provider for which the Commission has determined that a requirement for closed captioning imposes an undue burden.

Child watching TV

Child watching TV

So what options exist for the hearing impaired?  Hulu, Youtube, and HBO On Demand all offer Closed Captioning for streaming movies and TV episodes.  You can also gather support on this issue by visiting the Facebook group Netflix Watch-Instantly Needs Closed Captions! What other websites have you come across with accessibility positives or negatives?

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