A group of deaf activists has turned to social media to launch a campaign to encourage Netflix to provide more captions for its films. Their petition, entitled, “Netflix: Make Films Accessible for the Deaf & HOH [Hard of Hearing],” asks Netflix “to provide a detailed search option of the current subtitled content as Netflix works towards providing subtitles for all of the current and future Netflix content.” As of today, almost 1,400 people have signed the petition.
Though the campaign was launched several months ago, the idea of Netflix being more user-friendly to the hearing impaired gained momentum after the National Association of the Deaf filed a lawsuit against the company on June 17. The group argues that the company is in violation of the Americans with Disabilites Act, because it does not allow the deaf to watch videos “instantly” like hearing customers.
Despite the lawsuit, the group does not want to take Netflix to court. They simply want Netflix to correct the problem and have issued the law suit as an impetus to do this.
