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Hard of Hearing and Going to the Movies: How do you deal with it?

Posted by arrowshooter @arrowshooter, Dec 7, 2019

I'll bet folks on here have many different experiences dealing with hearing at the movies at theaters. I'm curious how different folks deal with movies.

I have not gone to many movies because I can't understand them. I've probably gone to about 6 theater movies since 1970 and have tried to listen to movies at home (mostly unsuccessfully). Sound effects overpower a lot of speech, I can't understand any whispering, and "shouting doesn't help". Caption glasses and FM listeners are not very user-friendly for me.

I heard that this theater was showing the Open Caption movie at the request of some other deaf/hard of hearing individual. (It pays to speak up). I noticed several other deaf/hard of hearing folks there too so word must have gotten out about the Open Caption. I learned that even though I thought I could hear birds and crickets with my "new" 3-year old hearing aids I can't hear them well at all. The captions told of several things that were playing in the soundtrack but I didn't hear at all. And I learned that I could follow the movie much better than any other I've watched.

Now I'm wondering how to find when/where open caption movies play, how to request them, why they are not offered more. I did send a "thank you" to the theater for showing the movie and their consideration for the deaf and hard of hearing community.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Hearing Loss Support Group.

joyces | @joyces | Mar 29, 2020
In reply to @arrowshooter "The best answer for helping us understand movies is a hearing loop (induction loop). The equipment..." + (show)
@arrowshooter

The best answer for helping us understand movies is a hearing loop (induction loop). The equipment is not prohibitively expensive but installation costs usually are. The next best thing is open captions (open captions are on the screen all the time). But there is so much opposition to that from a very vocal hearing population that movie makers, who make huge amounts of money, won't change. They know who pays them. Politicians tend to align their opinions with where their votes come from and that is hard to change. I don't see the influence of big money or the politicians changing anytime soon. So MY first two choices are off the list of likely possibilities.

I find so many closed captions are so poorly done they are almost useless. They are very poorly timed and displayed and contain too many errors. On my local TV news I have use either the audio only or caption only. Both together doesn't work very well for me, but confuse me even more. This issue IS fixable if they'd just do it.

ADA only requires that "reasonable accommodations" are made and the devices they now use are deemed "reasonable" even if they don't work very well for some of us. If movie theaters had hearing loops or open caption movies I'd probably go to movies. But without that I just don't go to movies. Because I have not gone to movies in the last 55 years I have no interest in Netflix or other presentation of movies available now. But I've never tried them. I'm a movie illiterate.

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Last movie I tried to see was "Dances With Wolves." Because Meniere's also affects balance and, thus, vision, I cannot tolerate any side-to-side movement like action on wide screens, watching a train go by, driving along a line of spaced trees when the sun and shadows make patterns, driving with the windshield wipers on high. I have to sit at an end to watch a basketball game rather than on either side. So, no movies or even really big screen TVs for me. I'm far, far too cheap to spend money to go to a movie when I know I'll need to keep my eyes closed through any action parts!

I prefer to watch series on TV. (Remember that I've been unsuccessful at getting closed captions.) Occurs to me that it's easier to decode what's being said when you can anticipate what the characters may do, unlike movies. With a movie, even an actor you've watched in a TV series is acting an entirely new role to you. With cable, you could spend hours watching old series. Cable is still fairly new to us, because we watched network TV with an antenna until we started living here full-time not quite six years ago.

My husband can quote lyrics from lots of 60s pop songs. Partly because at that time I was married to a symphony/opera musician and played in amateur groups myself, I never really listened to pop music. The radio in our home was always tuned to a classical station. It now occurs to me that, even then, before I had real hearing problems, I undoubtedly had some distortion, which made it difficult to understand lyrics. Until I heard my present husband quote lyrics, I had no idea what pop songs were about other than a general theme. The greatest single loss when Meniere's struck hard almost 40 years ago was that I couldn't play in ensembles or orchestras: the recruitment made me physically ill, plus I couldn't hear others well enough to contribute correctly myself. When I went bilateral almost a year ago, all music suddenly sounded like a kazoo chorus. Recently, the woman at Costco was finally able to adjust my aid so that music sounds less abnormal, which is a real godsend...except that our annual music festival has been cancelled.

I suspect that many of us didn't hear clearly long before we realized we really had a hearing problem.

REPLY
JK | @contentandwell | Mar 29, 2020
In reply to @arrowshooter "The best answer for helping us understand movies is a hearing loop (induction loop). The equipment..." + (show)
@arrowshooter

The best answer for helping us understand movies is a hearing loop (induction loop). The equipment is not prohibitively expensive but installation costs usually are. The next best thing is open captions (open captions are on the screen all the time). But there is so much opposition to that from a very vocal hearing population that movie makers, who make huge amounts of money, won't change. They know who pays them. Politicians tend to align their opinions with where their votes come from and that is hard to change. I don't see the influence of big money or the politicians changing anytime soon. So MY first two choices are off the list of likely possibilities.

I find so many closed captions are so poorly done they are almost useless. They are very poorly timed and displayed and contain too many errors. On my local TV news I have use either the audio only or caption only. Both together doesn't work very well for me, but confuse me even more. This issue IS fixable if they'd just do it.

ADA only requires that "reasonable accommodations" are made and the devices they now use are deemed "reasonable" even if they don't work very well for some of us. If movie theaters had hearing loops or open caption movies I'd probably go to movies. But without that I just don't go to movies. Because I have not gone to movies in the last 55 years I have no interest in Netflix or other presentation of movies available now. But I've never tried them. I'm a movie illiterate.

Jump to this post

@arrowshooter You may be pleasantly surprised if you try Netflix. I find their captioning is the best around.
JK

REPLY
1 reply
arrowshooter | @arrowshooter | Mar 29, 2020
In reply to @contentandwell "@arrowshooter You may be pleasantly surprised if you try Netflix. I find their captioning is the..." + (show)
@contentandwell

@arrowshooter You may be pleasantly surprised if you try Netflix. I find their captioning is the best around.
JK

Jump to this post

Thanks JK, I may actually do that during this virus-imposed intermission in life's activities.

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