Lawsuit goes after Hollywood Studios

A lawsuit filed in LA accuses some major movie and TV-show makers of discriminating against the deaf by failing to offer streaming captioning. Named in the suit: Disney, Fox, Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal and Sony. The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf filed it as a class action suit on behalf of its members. AG Bell President Meredith Sugar said:

For people who are deaf and hard of hearing to understand a show, captions and subtitles are essential. If part of the show is not captioned or subtitled, then they cannot follow what is being said and they miss out on enjoying popular culture the same way as other people without hearing loss enjoy. Studios believe that copyright law prohibits them from captioning song lyrics in movies and television shows. That is just flat-out wrong. Courts have made clear that reproducing otherwise copyrighted material for the purpose of making the material accessible to people with disabilities is not a violation of the federal Copyright Act.

Read the details of the lawsuit here.