Being deaf has restrictions on our social lives! I can’t tell you how many times my friends have said “let’s go to see the new film at the cinema”… I can’t, as they never have enough subtitled showings!

Normally, new films won’t have a captioned showing until a week or two after the release date, so I miss out on a lot of social outings. The number of people who couldn’t be bothered to wait for me is extremely frustrating! I wrote to the cinema ages ago about this. Although they said that they had increased the number of showings… it’s still not enough for us deafies to go regularly, when we want to.

http://www.yourlocalcinema.com/ is a brilliant website to find the subtitled or audio described cinema showings in your area. However, where I come from there’s not a lot of variation, often more children’s films than adult ones. D and I wanted to watch Fast and Furious 7 before he went home, but there were no showings until the day after he went! How typical. Did I mention, there were two of the same subtitled showings at different cinemas, at the same time but no other times? It’s just not fair! We’ve now got to wait for the DVD release, but why should we wait?

“Public services need to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ otherwise it’s classed as discrimination” – Equality Act 2010

So come on Odeon, Vue and Cineworld… You’re losing out on deaf customers!

Non-subtitled films are still around… I studied Media at school and we had to watch specific films set by the exam board. Since I started the course, half of the films provided didn’t have subtitles. The exam board were a right pain in the backside when it came to emailing them about requesting subtitled films. Because of this, they had to change the whole curriculum plan for me… I felt so bad, but like I said, ‘reasonable adjustments’ have to be made for deaf students!

New television episodes… I absolutely love MTV Catfish, who doesn’t?! I get so excited when there’s a new series out, waiting for the release date like everybody else! What a surprise when it’s finally showed! … There’s no subtitles! The fact that I can’t watch some new programmes, makes me feel like they’re discriminating us deaf people, by only making the programmes accessible to the ‘normal hearing’ public. This puts me off TV for the rest of the night, and I go to bed grumbling at the downsides of being deaf, whilst my family enjoy watching it!

Live TV subtitles are so bad, agree? They’re just not fast enough, they miss lines out, or get words muddled up… it can be funny at times, here are some examples!

I’m a fan of Britain’s Got Talent, but I’ve lost count at the number of words that are spelled wrong or the amount of sentences that are late! Because of this, deaf people have delayed understanding of the programme, which results in us being left out in family and friend situations. We’re asking questions like “what did they just say?”, or we’re the last to laugh at the jokes, how embarrassing. It wouldn’t be as bad for us if the subtitle quality was improved!

My family loved to go to the theatre, we haven’t been much in the last few years. Anyway, I’m not a massive fan of theatre as I don’t have a clue as to what’s going on! How can I possibly lip-read sitting about 10 metres from the stage, looking down from the upstairs circle, when they’re all flouncing around the stage? Impossible! They have a hearing loop system, unfortunately they never work for me…

A couple of years ago, I did work experience at a small theatre and I was assisting them with access arrangements for deaf people. It was such fun, the end performance result was outstanding! They had a captioned performance, done by a palantypist, which was so accurate and detailed. I’d love if there were more of these in the big theatre. There was an up close and personal Question and Answer session where the actors were sat close to the deaf audience and there was a sign language interpreter which made us all feel so welcome!

That’s all for now, I’d love to hear your stories, view the contact page, Tweet me or email me at deafieblogger@gmail.com!

Love E x