Deaf activists in Virginia pushing for movie theater open captioning bill

Virginia hopes to become the second state in the nation to have an open captioning bill. 

Deaf activists and the Northern Virginia Association of the Deaf (NVAD) have worked with state legislators to introduce a House and a Senate bill that aims to require movie theaters with four or more screens to provide open captioning at least twice a week per movie, with at least one of them during peak attendance hours. 

The bills, SB 274 and HB 747, are similar with Hawaii’s open captioning law that was signed last year by Gov. David Ige to make them the first “open captioning” state. 

The Daily Moth was in touch with Jamie Berke, who is the Vice President for the NVAD and a leader in this effort. 

She explained that she reached out to Del. Vivian Watts (D) and Sen. George Barker (D) in May and told them about Hawaii’s law and said “we need one in Virginia.” 

Berke said Del. Watts said she was willing to work on this and told her she had mild hearing loss. The bill writing process involved a disability rights lawyer and edits to the language, and now a bill is introduced in both chambers.

I asked Berke what kind of opposition she is facing or expect to get against the bill. She said the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) doesn’t want to see a bill passed. 

Berke also said there may be some Virginia legislators who may not want to see regulation of movie theaters.

She said the easy part was getting the support of a lawmaker in both chambers, but the hard part is getting people in the community to support the bill and take action.

Berke said her “only weapon” to convince lawmakers to support the bill is a change.org petition for open captions that has just under 13,000 signatures right now. The link is above in the description or in the transcript. 

Berke said we need “permanent legal protection for open captions as an additional option besides already-mandated closed caption equipment. “ 

The Virginia legislative session only lasts from January 8 to March 5, so the NVAD is hoping for community activism “now” to push legislators to support the bill. 

The House version is now referred to the Committee on Health, Welfare, and Institutions. 

The links to the bills are below. For more information, you can reach out to the NVAD — their link is also in the transcript. 

Virginia is not the only state trying to get an open captioning law passed. Deaf activists in the District of Columbia have pushed for a bill and faced opposition from NATO. A captioning bill was also introduced last year in the Vermont legislature. 

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/movie-theaters-movie-theaters-support-open-captions

NVAD: https://www.vad.org/nvad.html

House Version of Bill: https://legiscan.com/VA/bill/HB747/2020
Senate Version of Bill: https://legiscan.com/VA/bill/SB274/2020