Captionfish Finds Captioned Movies Showing Near You

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Back in February, 2006 I wrote about a website called “Fomdi” that finds captioned movies near you. Fomdi was much better than nothing, but it had its limitations. Now something better has come along.

On May 18, 2009, DeafCode LLC released the beta version of their brand new “Captionfish” captioned movie finder. This free website automatically provides information about captioned movies in your area based upon your computer’s “address”.

Their “blurb” reads: “It is the first website to integrate an Instant CC Film Finder™, which provides immediate and effortless custom results within 30 miles of a chosen location, refreshed on each visit to Captionfish.com.”

I found it better to put in my own address manually rather than accept where Captionfish thinks I am. For example, when I first tried Captionfish, it calculated its results as though I lived in York, PA, not in Stewartstown, PA where I actually live—a difference of about 20 miles. When I put in my Stewartstown address, it replaced the 1 movie in my “area” with 3 others that were actually closer to me, but to the south.

By default, Captionfish shows you the captioned movies that are showing today within 30 miles of your location. You can easily change this to the next 7 days if you want to. You can also set the radius from 30 miles to 15, 45 or 60 miles depending on how many movie theaters are near you, and how far you are willing to drive.

Another cool feature of Captionfish is that it indicates whether the theater uses Rear Window Captioning (closed captions), or whether the movie is open captioned.

In my opinion, open captioning is much nicer than Rear Window Captioning as there is nothing you need to have (a small, smoked glass screen available at the theater, but you need to ask for it), or do (set up the screen and aim it at the back wall where the captions are actually displayed), and you can sit anywhere (and not only where you get a clear shot at the back wall).

With Rear Window Captioning, you read the captions off the small, smoked glass screen in front of you while you watch the action on the big screen at the front of the theater. Thus, you are trying to focus on, and watch, two different places at once, not always an easy task.

Now, back to Captionfish: when you click on the “Movie Details” link, Captionfish shows you a printed description of the movie, and also shows you a short preview of the movie. Note, this preview is also captioned! Nice!

Another cool feature for those hard of hearing people on the move is that Captionfish provides a mobile website optimized for mobile phones so you can start driving and find the film you want as you go.

For those of you that use custom RSS feeds, Captionfish enables an RSS feed so you can check for the latest captioned film results using your preferred RSS reader.

To find captioned movies in your area (Captionfish just covers the USA), simply click on Captionfish. It’s that simple!

[Note: Captionfish is shutting down on December 31, 2014. Here is the massage, “We are closing Captionfish down on December 31st. As one of our valued supporters, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your support of Captionfish through its amazing ride. This has been a labor of love, but due to our personal commitments and lack of funding, we are unable to provide ongoing support for Captionfish.”]