by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Doesn’t it just irk you when you go into a coffee shop and the TV is on, but there are no captions so you can’t understand what is going on? Maybe you are in the breakfast area at a motel and they are showing the weather for the day—but you can’t understand a thing because of your poor hearing.
Where are the captions? You can ask the management to turn the captions on. Sometimes they will, and sometimes they come up with every excuse in the book for not doing so.
When this happens in a hotel or motel at which you are staying, you might want to take a page out of Lynne’s book. Here is what she does.
She explained,
We are just completing a week at a Best Western. I have asked repeatedly to have the Breakfast Room’s TV’s closed captions turned on so I can watch the Today Show & news. Replies ranged from not knowing how, to not possible, to promises to look into it.
After no captions for several days, I brought the remote control from my room and did it myself. Luckily it doesn’t require re-programming each day. The captions are still on and available for others, and may even remain so for a long time, since they do not seem to know to turn them off.
Everyone should initiate such captions, one hotel at a time. I will also mention the situation in my end-of-visit evaluation to both the individual hotel and the chain. It is annoying that such repeated ‘pleading’ is even necessary.
Way to go Lynne! This is something we could all do as the opportunity presents itself. I know that I always leave the TV’s captions on in any hotel room I stay in. Hopefully, they will be still on for the next person that stays there.
Great idea I have to do it at home I also have Musical Hearing Syndrome about it,that I can even change the song playing in my head,I can even start singing a Hawaiian song and it will change?