August 31, 2005
As President of the Ontario Cultural Society of the Deaf, I am writing to provide our organization's full support to the human rights action being brought forward by Gary Malkowski, Scott Simser, and Nancy Barker to make captioning in movie theatres universally available.
We strongly believe that the Deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing have every right to access and enjoy movies in the theatres along with the rest of society. Without rear window captioning, nor DTS-CSS, nor the chosen method of captioning, this is not an option available to us.
The practice of not providing rear window captioning, DTS-CSS, or other methods of captioning in all movie theatres is clearly discriminatory. The few theatres that do have this service are very limited, and only provide perhaps one movie shown with captioning for a short period of time. Why should the Deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing be excluded and put at this disadvantage? The technology is available to provide this benefit to a growing number of Canadians who have some degree of hearing loss.
We salute the courage and determination of Gary Malkowski, Scott Simser, and Nancy Barker in their efforts to seek equal access to movies in the theatres for the Deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing population in Canada.
We shall look forward to the day when we may have the same rights as the rest of society to attend, understand, and enjoy movies in our local movie theatres.
Sincerely,
Darren Holst,
President