“Accommodations 101: Captions in the Classroom” video

Video Description:

A light-skinned black deaf woman with short, brown curly hair sits wearing a black shirt and lavender sweater and matching dangly earrings. She uses ASL.

Speech:

When a film was shown without closed captions, I would ask the instructor if the video was captioned or not. When they indicated they didn’t know, I would ask them to please find out, because, without it, I can’t understand the film. They hadn’t even considered it.

One time, someone asked me if I could read lips, to which I responded, “yes and no.”

In their confusion, I clarified that I could read some words on people’s lips but that didn’t mean I could understand everything being said. Lipreading involves a lot of guesswork!

So, only when I ask if they have captions does it even occur to them. Even if a deaf character is on screen and they are using sign language, I still would ask for captions to be turned on because it forces them to rethink accessibility as a whole.

It forces them, in a nice way...it forces it to become the new normal.

Video Description:

As Ashlea fades, a teal circle with lettering overlaid appears: “Accommodations 101: Captions in the Classroom.”

End of Accessibility Document