I wish that hearing people could understand how important it is to have subtitles – especially accurate ones. One day, I would love to see all media including social media, TV and film with subtitles available.
Some companies like Netflix do have subtitles. But the subtitles aren’t always accurate. Even services like Sky can be very random. Some channels will have subtitles for certain shows one week and then subtitles won’t be available by the next show or the next week. Also, in some social media such as TikTok, people have started including captions in their videos which is great, but the app doesn’t make it easy to add subtitles.
As a deaf woman with cochlear implants, sometimes I have been interested in videos or curious about something, but because it didn't have subtitles and I was only able to hear or guess the content or the context.
I remember one time at the cinema, my sister told me that the film (I can't remember which one) had subtitles and I was so pleased. But most of the films my family and I watched in the cinema didn’t have subtitles. I remember that my sister told me about the lack of subtitles and apologised. It was nice of my family to apologies because they felt bad and they wanted me to involved and to understand what is the film about. I told my family that it was okay, and I could listen with my cochlear implant, but I was disappointed.
What about schools? Let's talk about that. Through from college until university, my interpreters asked my tutors/lecturers to put the subtitles on the videos. Some of them didn't have it and, when they did, some of them weren’t good. I felt bad and grateful for my interpreters who signed what the video had been saying when it didn't have subtitles, or the subtitles wasn't good. The interpreters had to sign what they were saying from start until the end of the sessions. This may not sound too bad, but consider that lecturers, seminars, workshops and others may last for 2 hours or more and must be very tiring.
I remembered that back in high school when I was in year 10 or 11, some of my classmates would complain about the subtitles on the videos we watched. I didn't feel upset and I understood if they wanted to take them off. But for deaf people, we need full, accurate subtitles on all films, television programmes, cinemas, news and social media. It is important that deaf people don’t miss out what's happening and subtitles would be helpful for us to improve our ‘hearing English’ skills too.
Imagine if deaf people didn't have subtitles on the news. Wouldn’t that affect how much they understand? Not knowing what's happening could be bad or dangerous. What about deaf children? Would they be able to enjoy watching cartoons or tv programmes? This makes me think of when I was younger back in Nigeria, I used to watch the Lion King film with my older sister and we would dance along to songs. But when we were dancing, I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't hear anything.
I want hearing people to understand how difficult it might be for deaf people to communicate with or relate to family, friends and other people without access to subtitles. For example, think about how often people send funny videos or memes. It can be so difficult to understand the joke without knowing the information in the videos.
If you want to understand what it feels like, I would like to encourage hearing people to try mute the volume and remove subtitles when watching videos. The should show you what it’s like for deaf people a lot of the time.
I hope subtitles will be more available and more accurate for videos on social media, films and more in the future.
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