Friday 30 December 2016

Deaf Girly and the (inaccessible) Christmas Movies

One of my favourite things about Christmas – aside from the lovely family gatherings, endless snacks and chocolate, the sparkly tree and presents – is the festive movies. I absolutely love a Christmas film. Even terrible ones... and believe me, there are some terrible ones out there.

There's just something about them – the warm and fuzzy feelings, the amazing scenery as they are usually set in the USA with an abundance of snow, and the cheesy soundtracks – I can't get enough of them.

As someone who doesn't have a TV, I rely mainly on watching movies on catch-up on our computer, and this year Channel 5 did not disappoint with its double bill, daily afternoon Christmas movie fest. There were all sorts of cheesy movies, including one that I particularly liked called A Cinderella Christmas.

It's up there with my other favourite cheesy Christmas movies: Holidaze – staring 90210's Jennie Garth, which is about a woman who hits her head and wakes up in a parallel universe, and A Christmas Snowglobe, which randomly stars Christina Milan and is about... well a Christmas snowglobe.

However, neither of these movies were on Channel 5 this year. They may have been on the Christmas 24 channel, which I only just today discovered existed, but being TV-less, I do not have this...

As I wanted to keep the Christmas cheer a bit longer, I set out trying to find all three of my favourite movies online to download, which turned out to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated.

Holidaze is available on Google Play and Amazon Video to download, but neither of these versions has subtitles or closed captions. Randomly, Holidaze is available to download on US iTunes with closed captions but only if you live in the US... which of course, I don't. It is NOT available on UK iTunes.

A Cinderella Christmas is available only on Amazon.com – the US site – as a digital download with closed captions, and is not available on the UK site, but more on that in a moment.

A Christmas Snowglobe is available on Google Play without closed captions. In fact, this was the only movie that I couldn't find anywhere with closed captions.

So in a nutshell, I cannot get any of these movies with closed captions, in this country.

*scowls

Obviously I decided to investigate this more and here's what I found out:

A Cinderella Christmas

You cannot buy anything digital on Amazon.com without having a US registered address and bank card. I thought that perhaps I could get around this by buying myself an Amazon.com gift card. I could not. So I contacted the lovely peeps on Amazon chat and to be fair they were amazing. I asked them why the content was not available to the UK Amazon users and they said it just wasn't. But they did – once I fessed up what I was trying to do – refund me on my gift card.

You can however, watch this movie on Demand 5 until 16 January – I am considering watching it every day just in case I never get to watch it again... yes, I am that sad!

Holidaze

I started by writing an email to iTunes, asking them why a movie was available on US iTunes but not UK iTunes and imploring them to consider making it available, especially when it is already available on Google Play and Amazon. I received a vanilla response thanking me for my feedback.

*scowls

I then contacted Amazon on their fantastic chat function and was told that the movie studio provides the film in that format and so it is not possible to change.

*scowls some more

And finally I contacted Google Play, who also told me that the movie studio was responsible so the error was theirs.

*scowls even more

So I contacted ABC Family/Freeform in America – the company that made the movie – and asked them why they had provided the movie without closed captions to the UK. Of course they didn't answer this exact question but instead told me that the movie had closed captions and they could see no reason why it wasn't captioned on Google Play and Amazon.

And then I got dizzy and sick and tired of going around in circles.

I contacted Google Play again today and was helped by a very nice man called Kevin who once again told me that there was nothing Google could do as this was the format of the movie they had been given by the distributor.

I am not sure that Kevin was allowed to leave the 'live chat' until I had confirmed that I was happy, so we had a 20 minute text conversation about how sad I was about my deafness and the lack of Christmas movies with closed captions while he typed platitudes and shared my frustrations. I think once I finally got off live chat, Kevin went and made himself a very strong coffee in the Google Play Kitchen.

A Christmas Snowglobe

By the time I got to trying to find out about this movie, I had basically lost the will to ask the same questions over and over again, so I guess we will never find out whether it's possible to get this movie with closed captions.

And after all this, I am once again at a brick wall and banging my head against it.

It amazes me that accessibility to digital content differs so greatly between the USA and the UK and while I know these big corporations have bigger things on their plate than worrying about whether some cheesy Christmas movie is available to a deaf girl in London, I am sad that accessible content continues to be something that is overlooked in favour of saving money, convenience or even perhaps licensing laws.

Do you know, I once emailed the company that released Dr Quinn Medicine Woman on DVD – OK, I know that's bad, but please try your hardest not to judge me on my cheesy taste in TV – to ask why none of the DVDs had closed captions and was told it was a money thing. The demand and the cost were incompatible.

Sucks to be deaf eh?

Being deaf is more expensive. While I get my hearing aids for free, my US friends must pay for theirs. But, even in the UK, so many other little things add cost to my everyday life. I understand the cost of deafness more than I'd care to. And just sometimes it would be nice to think that Amazon, Google and Apple did too and gave me and other deaf people, who'd like to watch cheesy Christmas movies with closed captions even in July, a break.

I am going to continue asking for those three Christmas movies to be made accessible to me and if that fails, I might do what the lovely guy on Amazon.com chat suggested and move to the USA...

But then what's a deaf girl like me going to do over there eh? Watch closed captioned Christmas movies I guess!

Happy New Year peeps!

Hope 2017 is a brilliant one.

DG
x


Friday 2 December 2016

Deaf Girly downloads Netflix with subtitles

Today is thankful Friday and on waking this morning I was very thankful to receive an email from Netflix.

In this email, Netflix told me that the recent iOS app update meant that I could now download programmes to watch offline!!

I know!

This was almost as exciting as when BBC iPlayer released this feature.

But, being deaf and endlessly disappointed by these sort of things not including subtitles – while iPlayer offered downloads for ages, it took them quite a while to offer downloads with subtitles – I proceeded cautiously...

Oh who am I kidding, I excitedly opened the app, found my favourites and clicked straight away to download something. Two minutes later, it was ready and hurrah – it had subtitles.

Things like this really, really make me happy – Netflix gets a new function and deaf people benefit at the same time as hearing peeps. Amazing eh?

Someone asked me the other day if I'd like to fast-forward to 40 or go back to being 10 – with a ton of money thrown in – and I had a big think about this, because obviously I had nothing better to do! If I had to go back to being 10 in 1990, NO WAY would I do that. To a time where hardly any TV was subtitled and even then, not properly, where I didn't own a caption reader yet – and even when I did get one, only a handful of videos had this icon on them:


A time when mobile phones and texting were not available so telephone calls had to be made – and not heard – and hearing aids were large, unwieldy and extremely unhelpful.

But would I like to be 10 now? Nope. Not even with all the technological advancements that would have helped me learn better at school, be more sociable out of school and access more TV and movies. Not on your life.

I am quite happy being 36 in 2016 – which is lucky seeing as this isn't Big and there aren't any viable alternatives. 

I love that I am able to keep in touch with all my friends effortless on the super computer  I keep in my pocket AKA my iPhone – FaceTime is basically the best thing ever... lipreading on a phone call? My 10-year-old self would never have believed that.

I love that I can watch most things subtitled at some point – except There's No Such Thing as a Fish on iPlayer, which has permanently appalling subtitles – and get accessibility help for lots of things. And I love that my Phonak Nathos hearing aids have given me a 3D world I love when I honestly thought I was happy living in a 2D one.

For me, being deaf has it's frustrations, limitations, upsets and annoyances, but I also think there's not better time to be deaf – don't get me wrong, things aren't perfect but sometimes it's the little things. And today's little thing was downloadable programmes on Netflix with subtitles.

Happy Friday peeps

DG

xx

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