what the hell where the sandal-wearing PC correct brigade at ITV thinking of , when they came up with the ludicrous idea of sticking “signers” on some of their late night movies?
now, i’m as much in favour of equal access rights for the disabled as the next guy, but why do i have to suffer what looks like a small gnome with st. vitus dance threshing about in the corner of the screen while i’m trying to watch a movie. i bet even the deaf find it fucking irritating. what’s wrong with subtitles for god’s sake? they’re an age-old, tried, tested and what’s more, unobtrusive solution to the problem of watching a movie where [for whatever reason] you can’t follow the dialogue.
i’m sure sign language is a wonderful communication tool when speaking face to face with a deaf person, but that doesn’t make it the logical [or even remotely sane!] choice for giving the deaf access to television movies - anymore than having some bloke screeching a simultaneous translation in your ear, would enhance the enjoyment of opera for non-italian speakers.
the other thing that irritates me is that ITV don’t see fit to warn you in their TV listings that these films are signed. so on a couple of occasions i’ve settled down to watch, what i think is going to be a good movie, only to nearly put my boot through the fucking screen when that windmill-armed cunt suddenly appears, leaping round in the corner and blocking my view of what’s going on!
07 August 2008 at 11:38
“what’s wrong with subtitles for god’s sake?”
Nothing wrong, it’s education that is a problem.
Not including the youngest generation, deaf viewers in the UK count among themselves a very large number of illiterate or only partially literate people. High-speed subtitle reading is beyond the capability of many of these. Why? “Oralist” education policies in the post-war era failed the deaf community severely, and only in the 70’s and afterwards did high levels of literacy become common among the British deaf community. And even then, literacy among the deaf falls behind that of the hearing.
If only there was an on-screen signer that could be switched on and off at will! You know, like subtitles can be. One day soon, this facility - called “closed signing” - will happen. But not yet.
Therefore:
“I bet even the deaf find it fucking irritating”
Probably not.
“ITV don’t see fit to warn you in their TV listings that these films are signed”
What TV listings are you reading? The ones I use tell me which programmes have subtitles, are repeats, have audio-description for the sight-impaired and also, yes, in-vision signing. But otherwise, that’s a good point to make.