NAD files lawsuit over podcast inaccessibility

The National Association of the Deaf announced on Tuesday that they have joined forces with Disability Rights Advocates to file a federal lawsuit against three major providers of podcasts because they failed to provide transcripts for most of their podcast content.

The lawsuit was filed in New York against SiriusXM, Stitcher, and Pandora. The NAD is representing five deaf Americans: Mei Nishimoto, Jazmine Jones, Dr. Amber Martin, James Munro, and Rebecca Alexander, who is also blind.

The NAD said the podcast services are violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and New York State law by leaving behind deaf and hard of hearing people in the latest form of entertainment. The NAD said in a press release that “none of these multimillion-dollar companies provide transcripts.” The NAD said in the lawsuit that it is “relatively simple” to provide transcripts with automatic speech recognition and human cleanup.

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The NAD said in the lawsuit that popular podcasts consists of interviews with celebrities such as Kevin Hart, original content from Marvel, murder mysteries, and inspirational messages from religious leaders, but deaf and hard of hearing individuals are excluded from enjoying and learning from these programs.

The NAD said in the lawsuit that they tried to “resolve this matter without a lawsuit but were unable to obtain sufficient commitments from Defendants to remedy these barriers to full and equal access.” The NAD said the five deaf individuals they are representing have not registered nor purchased an account with the podcast providers because they knew the content isn't accessible, but they would do so if they were provided with transcripts.

The links to the press release and lawsuit document is available in the transcript.

NAD Press Release: https://www.nad.org/2021/12/14/lawsuit-challenges-inaccessibility-of-major-podcast-platforms/

Lawsuit document: https://bit.ly/325kEbY