A captioning question.....

How come at a live political rally there is a sign language interpreter next to a person giving a speech who is running for office in front of thousands of people but no real time captioning nearby?

That's something to think about.

You have about 600,000 culturally deaf people (adults) who use sign language as their main mode of communication but you also have some 38 million people with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound who do not know a lick of sign language. You have about 6 million people who have difficulty hearing in the 18 to 74 age group, a rough estimate. But if you include those over 74 years old the estimate jumps to about 10 million as a total for those 18 and older.  There are about 200 million people in the United States in the 18 to 74 year old age category, an age group of those who are most likely to attend a political rally.  So that means 1 out 33 people in a large crowd listening to what a person is saying on stage at a political rally will have difficulty hearing what's being said vs 1 out 333 people who may be culturally deaf attending the event.

For example, in a crowd of 10,000 people attending a political rally you may have 300 people in the audience who will have trouble hearing or understanding what's being said versus perhaps 30 culturally deaf people who may be in attendance. I think it is a disservice to those who attend a rally but have trouble hearing what's being said with no access to real time captioning. Some have requested CART services at rallies (see page 5) yet this should be done automatically, within reason if it's not cost prohibitive, without the need to ask just as sign language interpreters are sometimes automatically provided.

The real hidden and silent majority of those with hearing loss are not the culturally deaf people but those who don't sign and have trouble hearing while relying on their hearing aids. In time this will change for the better on providing better communication to all those who need it.