Deaf, hard-of-hearing moviegoers face challenges, but technology may help
As with many other "Star Wars" fans, Robert Saccente experiences anxiety when he watches his favorite movie and sees Darth Vader's menacing black helmet — but for a very different reason.
“I can’t lip read because he has that mask on,” said Saccente, 48, of Valley Stream, who is deaf and uses American Sign Language. “All of the soldiers, they have their head gear on, their masks. So it’s kind of strange. I wouldn’t be able to understand what the characters are saying.”
Far from the relaxing experience it is for most people, watching a movie on the big screen can be rife with challenges and frustrations for the 40 million Americans living with hearing loss. With open-captioned screenings infrequent or out of the way, and assistive technology being burdensome and prone to malfunctions, any movie can quickly become a disaster flick.
Bradley Porche´, left, sits with a closed-captioning device in front of him. Toula Ramey wears headphones. They're sitting at North Shore Towers Cinema with Robert Saccente Jr. and Ryan Niewender earlier this month.
Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
“Growing up, sometimes my friends would say, ‘Hey let’s go to the movies,’” Bradley Porché, executive director of the Mill Neck Manor School for the Deaf, said through an ASL interpreter. “I want to go hang out with them and socialize, so I’m willing to go and just and watch. But I’m not really getting anything out of that. Sometimes I didn’t even know what was happening.”
Where to watch open-captioned movies
- The AMC Raceway 10 theater in Westbury and the AMC Stony Brook 17 theater in Stony Brook regularly show open-captioned movies. Go to AMCTheatres.com and search listings for show times labeled “Open-Captioned (On Screen Subtitles.)”
- Regal Theaters can accommodate requests for screenings for groups of 10 or more at regcc@regalcinemas.com.
- The North Shore Towers Cinema in Floral Park exclusively shows open-captioned movies on Wednesdays and Sundays. Follow them at Facebook.com/CinemaAtNorthShoreTowers.
- Under a New York City law passed in 2020, most movie theaters are required to show some of their movies with open captions. More information is available at nyc.gov/captions.
- The Deaf Equal Access Foundation works to provide accessibility at theaters, and shares information about where to see open-captioned movies. Visit them at deafocmovies.org.
Most theaters offer some kind of technology to help viewers with hearing loss, including devices that send audio directly to headphones, hearing aids, or cochlear implant processors, or closed captioning devices that display text of dialogue and audio descriptions on a small screen mounted in a cup holder or on special eyeglasses. But the devices can be uncomfortable to wear, time consuming to borrow, and difficult to set up. What’s more, they run on batteries that are often not sufficiently charged.
“Usually, any movie over an hour-and-a-half, it’s going to die,” said Amanda Landers, 35, a hard-of-hearing American Sign Language teacher from Ronkonkoma, who was eager to see the three-hour-plus long new "Avatar: The Way of Water" in theaters. “Even if those things worked perfectly, they would die half way through the movie. I’m not even going to try it.”
A close-up view of the closed-captioning device used while watching movies at many theaters. This is at North Shore Towers Cinema.
Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.For many people with hearing loss, the gold standard of accessibility is open-captioned movies, where text appears right on the movie screen, as if you were watching a foreign film. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people regularly seek out such screenings, and plan social gatherings around them. In 2021, the Mill Neck school arranged for an open-captioned screening for its students of Marvel’s "The Eternals," which featured a deaf superhero named Makkari.
“It was wonderful that our students were able to experience that. They went to the theater, and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves,” said Porché, who usually relies on the cupholder mounted closed captioning device when he goes to the movies. “It’s an adequate experience … But if you ask me what my preference is, it would be open captioning for all movies.”
Christopher Castillo, 12, uses special closed-captioning glasses.
Credit: Newsday/Alfonso Castillo
But open-captioned screenings are typically infrequent and hard to find.
The nation’s largest movie chain, AMC, hosts open captioned screenings at two theaters on Long Island — in Westbury and Stony Brook. That follows a policy adopted in 2021 to show open captioned movies in two theaters in every market.
At the time, AMC executive vice president Elizabeth Frank said the company was looking to make its theaters a “welcoming place for millions of Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.”
“Initial consumer response has been very positive, and we anticipate strong demand with growing awareness of open-caption show times at AMC,” Frank said in a statement.
Bradley Porche´ discusses his moviegoing experience, using sign language. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The next-largest movie theater operator, Regal, does not regularly schedule open-captioned movies at any of its five locations on Long Island, but Regal spokesperson Kristen Kehlet said screenings could be arranged by request for groups of 10 or more. "The joy of going to the movies should be accessible to all, so Regal proudly provides a variety of assistive technology for our guests who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or have low vision,” said Kehlet.
Fred Korman, CEO of the he Deaf Equal Access Foundation, or D.E.A.F., a nonprofit advocacy group, said the limitations placed on deaf moviegoers on Long Island are “not fair.” He said that requests for open-captioned movies are sometimes not approved until the same day they are screened. Korman also noted that AMC’s policy limits open captioned moviegoers on Long Island to just two movie theaters, and screenings during “off-peak hours, when a majority of the deaf and [hard of hearing] community is at work or have kids in school.”
In 2020, Korman’s group successfully advocated to have New York City pass a law requiring most theaters in the five boroughs to regularly host open captioned movies. He has since moved to South Florida, and helped get a similar bill passed there.
“Long Island is in serious need of its own bill,” Korman said. “Equal access means the same access as everyone else … It’s important for the deaf community’s mental health to get out and enjoy themselves instead of isolating themselves at home.”
Henry and Anne Stampfel, who own a small chain of independent movie theaters on Long Island, said they are willing to do their part. Years ago, when theaters still got their movies from studios on film reels, the couple sought out prints of open-captioned movies from a company that specialized in them, and screened them in their now-defunct Oceanside Cinema.
But for all the gratitude the couple received from deaf and hard-of-hearing customers who sought out the screenings, the Stampfels said they’d also get complaints and requests for refunds from hearing customers.
A wider view of a closed-captioning device at North Shore Towers Cinema.
Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
“You have to understand that there are customers that it distracts them and they become frustrated, if they weren’t notified or told that it was going to be a captioned film,” said Henry Stampfel, who noted that he’s noticed “more of an acceptance” of captions more recently, as they’ve become commonplace for people who want to watch Internet videos with the sound off.
More recently, the couple has dedicated Sundays and Wednesdays exclusively to open-captioned screenings at its North Shore Towers Cinema in Floral Park. The theater is inside a residential facility with a large senior population, but is open to the public. The couple said it is considering expanding the program to other theaters on Long Island.
“I guess I’ve always had a soft spot, because I took sign language for many years a long time ago … I have a friend from high school who lost her hearing, and I see her from time to time and we sign together,” said Anne Stampfel, who was specially moved by last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, "CODA," which told the story of a deaf family with a hearing daughter. “I thought it was fantastic. At the end, when they cut the sound off and they make the audience experience what it’s like, it was pretty amazing.”
A FATHER'S STORY
It may not make me father of the year, but when "Halloween Kills" was released in 2021, my then-10-year-old son Christopher, who loves horror movies, really wanted to see it. So, R-rating be damned, I took him.
I suppose I could have covered his ears whenever questionable language was used, but it really wouldn’t have mattered, because he’s deaf.
Chris uses cochlear implants in both his ears, and gets by pretty well in the hearing world. But we always “put the words on” when we watch TV at home, and occasionally use captioning or assistive listening devices when visiting a theater.
For the special occasion of the return of Michael Myers, we sought out our first open-captioned movie. My wife Dana, my other son AJ, Chris and I made the drive from our home in Valley Stream to the AMC Raceway theater in Westbury for what was advertised as an open-captioned screening.
But when the first victim’s screams rang out at the beginning of the film, and were not transcribed at the bottom of the screen, it became quickly apparent that the wrong version of the movie was being played.
I stepped out of the theater to complain to a manager, and was given free passes to a future movie, which have since expired. There was no offer made to restart the movie with the captions on.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time that I had to walk out of a movie to address an accessibility issue for my kid. Usually, it’s a closed captioning device that isn’t synced to the correct theater screen, or has run out of battery charge. The response is usually the same — an apology, and, if we’re lucky, some more free passes.
So, when an instructor in an online journalism training session recently posed the question, “If you could write a story about anything, what would it be?,” I thought not about my day job covering the transportation beat, but about my more important job as Chris’ dad.
“I want to write a story about deaf people going to the movies,” I replied. And, so, I did.
In truth, the importance of this subject extends far beyond my story’s admittedly narrow scope. Accessibility is a daily struggle for the more than 250,000 people (according to the U.S. census) living with disabilities on Long Island.
Unfortunately, the valid concerns raised by those with disabilities are too often dismissed because addressing them comes with costs, and, sometimes, inconvenience for some.
When I asked one hard-of-hearing woman I interviewed for this story about her first experience in an open-captioned movie, she said it was ruined by people near her who spent the entire movie complaining about the annoying words on the screen. A theater owner similarly told me about regularly getting refund requests whenever they play open-captioned movies.
Unfortunately, for some, accessibility remains its own kind of boogeyman. — ALFONSO A. CASTILLO
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.
