To the MassMATCH community:
MassMATCH has recently learned that Apple is providing very poor access to closed-captioned media through its iTunes service. Deaf and hard of hearing individuals report that even movies that are in wide circulation and easily acquired with captions through other outlets are not available with captioning through iTunes. As a result, only a very small iTunes library of captioned media is available, and it is unnecessarily hard to find. We are urging our readership to email Apple CEO Steve Jobs:
<
mailto:sjobs@apple.com?subject=Please%20fix%20captioned%20movie%20access%20at%20iTunes%21> to provide better access and to forward this action alert for others to also take action.
Below is a sample letter to use or adapt for this effort. (Note: Steve Jobs's email address is
sjobs@apple.com.)
Sincerely, MassMATCH
Dear Apple CEO Steve Jobs:
Please take immediate corrective action to provide meaningful access to closed captioned movies on iTunes.
Although deaf and hard of hearing individuals pay the same money for your hardware and software, and although Apple advertises this closed-captioned functionality on its iPod Touch and iPad products, currently this is not a truly usable function.
Two problems exist:
1. To find captioned movies on iTunes, users now must engage a power search feature which is not at all easy or intuitive to find, and select the category "captioning" for movies.
2. The selection of captioned movies provided by Apple--should a user succeed at finding them--is miniscule. Virtually none of the most recent movies or popular movies are available as captioned on iTunes, even though they are available captioned just about everywhere else.
Please comply with the expectations laid out in the Americans with Disabilities Act by providing better access to and ceasing to strip movies of accessibility features that are already available and usually paid for by the studios or production companies themselves. Please stop depriving millions of Americans access to iTunes-based movies and media.
Sincerely,
Your Name and Contact Info Here
