MTO Debuts an Open-Captioned Screening of the Film at Penn State

By: Jane Berliss-Vincent

As Me, The “Other”so beautifully demonstrates, words play a large role in uniting or dividing us. For some people, words work best when spoken. For others, audio needs to be supplemented or replaced by text. Providing captioning as part of a film helps improve access for any audience members who benefit from hearing and seeing text simultaneously, as well as anyone stuck in front of a fellow moviegoer whose popcorn-eating style is LOUD! More importantly, the use of true captioning—which also describes non-verbal sounds such as laughter, or leaves being crunched underfoot—makes a film fully appreciable by D/deaf and hard of hearing viewers.

A deaf filmgoer’s disappointment that MTO was not accessible to them gave the film’s producers the impetus to provide closed captioning so that many more people would have access to the film. Captioning should ideally be done by experienced professionals, who can efficiently create high quality output.However, due to budgetary constraints and my personal belief in the film’s powerful message of diversity and inclusion, I offered to help by using the free Windows programs Subtitle Edit to create and sync the transcript with the audio, and VideoProc to burn in open captions (captions that appear automatically whenever a film is shown). There is now a captioned .MP4 version of MTO that can be shown from a Mac or Windows computer, and we are working on a .DCP version for use on projectors and, ultimately, a DVD. I’ve gotten positive feedback on the results, and encourage anyone planning a MTO showing to request the open captioned version.

As an accessibility specialist at – and alumna of – one of the schools featured in MTO, it has been an honor for me to be a part of this project. And while I loved hearing all the stories, I’m particularly pleased that AJ and Kit were given the opportunity to present their lives as men whose disabilities flavor, rather than restrict, their relationship.

More about Jane …

Currently the Assistive Technology Manager at the University of Michigan, Jane has 30+ years of experience in the field of assistive technology as a consultant, trainer, author, researcher, project manager, product evaluator, and service provider.  Her writings include two books: Implementing Cost-Effective Assistive Computer Technology (Neal-Schuman, 2011) and Making the Library Accessible for All: A Practical Guide for Librarians (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).