In 2010, the NAD, the Western Massachusetts Association of the Deaf and Hearing Impaired and Lee Nettles brought a suit against Netflix for its lack of captioning. Since then, Netflix has increased its captioning levels so that 90% of content currently being viewed has captions. Increasing this to 100% is a significant victory for the Deaf and hearing impaired, and in important step in the ongoing struggle to make online video content accessible.
The CEO of the NAD, Howard A. Rosenblum, said, “The National Association of the Deaf congratulates Netflix for committing to 100% captioning, and is thrilled to announce that 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people will be able to fully access Netflix’s Watch Instantly services.”
In the lead-up to 100% captioning being achieved, Netflix has also agreed to improve its user interface to make it easier for people to identify which movies and TV shows have captions.
For more information about the Netflix agreement, see the NAD’s media release.
Netflix is not yet available in Australia. For more on captioning and video on demand services in Australia and overseas, see our video on demand section.
Top of page