Passenger spots big problem with plane's in-flight entertainment: 'Do better'
Brad Klein is urging airlines to 'do better' after making the disappointing discovery.
A passenger on board an eight-hour flight has spotted a glaring oversight on the plane’s entertainment system.
Brad Klein, an American stand-up comedian, was on a Scandinavian Airlines flight on May 8 from Chicago to Copenhagen and was scrolling through the list of movies on his TV screen when he made the disappointing discovery.
“I’m on an airplane and we need to talk about something,” the 34-year-old said in a video to his 31,000 followers on Instagram.
“There are 99 movies I can watch on this flight. 99, okay. But only five have captioning. Five.”
Mr Klein, whose mum and dad are both deaf, performs his comedy shows in both American Sign Language [ASL] and English, and noted how little options there were for those with hearing loss.
And too bad if you didn’t feel like watching an action flick – three of the five movies available with captions were from the Fast and Furious franchise.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the Fast and Furious movies, all 600 of them,” Mr Klein joked. “But come on! Only five per cent of your movies are captioned and none are romcoms. Seriously?!
“It’s an eight-hour flight — do better. Caption all your movies please.”
Push for change
While Mr Klein is not deaf, he was raised in both the deaf and hearing communities and said he would love to see more inclusivity at airports and on planes.
"Unfortunately I have seen my parents and the deaf community battle issues like this my whole life. That’s why I made the video – to bring attention, awareness, and most importantly action towards helping fix these issues and make the world a more accessible place for everyone," he told Yahoo News.
"While it is cool to see my video go viral, I’d much prefer to see the airlines caption all of their content – safety videos, gate announcements, in-flight plane announcements, entertainment, etc. I hope my video is seen by all of the airlines and it enacts positive change moving forward."
Huge range of people use captions
Mr Klein's video quickly went viral, racking up more than four million views.
One viewer pointed out many others relied on captioning also, including those who don’t speak English as their first language, or for people with auditory processing problems.
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“ALL movies should have captions available,” another viewer agreed. “ALWAYS. I'm not Deaf/HoH [hard of hearing], but I'm an autistic-ADHDer. There's no way I could concentrate on a movie while flying if I didn't have captions, because there's literally no such thing as background noise for me – ALL OF IT is foreground.”
“I’m not deaf or HOH, but I cannot watch anything at all on TV or any screen without closed captions. I’ve been using CC my entire life because it helps so much with comprehension,” another added.
Mr Klein agreed a "significant portion of the population" would benefit from subtitles.
"Captioning is essential for some but useful for all," he said.
Ear health in Australia
About 3.6 million people have some level of hearing loss
More than 1.3 million people live with a hearing condition that could have been prevented
More than 1 in 3 Australians have noise-related ear damage
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have a much higher rate of ear disease than other children, which can result in hearing loss.
Source: Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
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