Words

I recently stumbled across an article (click here to see it) about a captioner who covered the horrors of 9-11. As I read it, I was reminded of just how necessary and vital a captioner’s role is in providing assistance to those with a hearing impairment. Can you imagine turning on the t.v. and watching those horrific events being played out, yet having no words to accompany it? Although to some it may only seem like little words running across the screen, to others it is those very words that help to keep them connected to the world that moves silently around them. Hellen Keller put it best… “I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus-- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. Blindness separates us from things, but deafness separates us from people.”
I say kudos to captioners everywhere. For with every little word you write you are helping bridge the gap that rests between the world of silence and that of sound, one that so many of us take for granted.