A year ago Thanksgiving weekend I went to a movie with my husband. We went to a neighboring town and got really excited because the movie theater had just gotten captioning. You can read about this epic fail on my blog so I won’t go into huge amount of detail in this blog piece.  A night at the movies starts the trio of blog pieces I did on this situation. I was told I didn’t sound deaf enough.  I learned so much with going through this mess. I learned that law dictates captioning in certain situations. I learned a little bit about standing up for myself. I deserve, we deserve to have equal access. I have battled Carmike theaters with no avail. They as in corporate and at the local theater I never heard back from them or issued even an apology. Since this dealing I have started trying to be an advocate. A letter to the editor was written and published. I tried educating the National Park service when a trip to a National monument didn’t have captioning. In the same breath we need to thank the businesses that do caption and do it willing. I wrote a note to the Crazy Horse Monument thanking them for captions. This is the great response I received.

Dear Sara,

What a wonderful treat to read your email! Your story and excitement is contagious, we have shared your comment with our management team and will make sure our staff know what a great job they did. We truly appreciate that you shared your experience with the Say What Club and the Collaborative for Communication Access Via Captioning organizations, it is an honor to serve the deaf and hard of hearing community. Your support and passion for the project is greatly appreciated and we look forward to your next visit.

Sincerely,

Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation

It pays to advocate for yourself but also thank the ones that provide.

A couple weeks ago my family decided to go to a movie together. We drove 1 1/2 hours to go to a theater that provided captioning. We decided on Hotel Transylvania 2. A cute cartoon feature. I received my captioning device and I couldn’t believe how excited I was getting to understand all the dialog of this movie.

Well it was a good intention but sadly the captioning device couldn’t connect with the movie. I was so disappointed. I left the movie and exchanged it for another unit where I was told it would for sure work. Sadly this unit couldn’t connect either. I was bummed but didn’t want to spend more time outside of the theater with my kids. We were making memories not exchanging captioning devices for the entire movie. I returned it at the end of the movie and told the employee it didn’t work. I was told sorry, “it should have.” Yes it should have!!!! I just paid how much to go to a movie and I understood a quarter of it.

I didn’t want to leap into another battle. I just felt a tad defeated, I am not meant to have captioning. A friend reminded me I am worth it and contact the theater. I took the advice and wrote an email. I was shocked to see a reply and an apology. Not long after this email an envelope was delivered. 4 tickets for our family to try again.

Isn’t that life trying again. Like Dory says in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming”.  I will try again and I won’t abandon the cause. Isn’t 3rd time a charm?  Keeping captioning off and inaccessible just keeps a person in the dark. There is no positive to this. Advocate for captioning. You, me and all who require it are worth it.