As of April 2008, they are no longer providing their resources. I think it’s due to lack of funding and people to maintain the site. It’s unfortunate….

Since then I showed up in person to ask about captioning in the future at their theater. I have received several different excuses for not having captioning at Tower Theatres. “No, we don’t have that capability” (I don’t believe that at all) “It’s too expensive to accommodate a few people” (Excuse me? A few people?) The most common answer is “I don’t know” or “The manager is not here to answer right now.”

So, I guess that means we’re still driving to Phoenix for Open Captioned movies. Bill, I have experience with rear window captioning as you described. It is difficult to keep the window up so you can actually see the words. Sometimes your focus is on the window you don’t realize what is happening on the screen. I have heard of ALOHA before I think from another student at the Univ of Arizona. This was a few years ago.

For now, I guess there isn’t much we can do. I was hoping Tower Theatres would be open to suggestions for open captioning. I originally contacted them because I work with K-12 students on campus at ASDB. We have several that live on campus 6-7 weeks at a time. The students love the movies we have in the past watch Open Captioned films at Century 16 on Grant or drive to Phoenix. Century 16 no longer has Open Captioned films listed and when they did it was Tuesday or Wednesday night not the best time for us to watch a movie. When we did watch movies at Century 16 it was close to being full. I guess theaters don’t realize the benefits of having captioning. I agree, I think most will wait until the movie is available on DVD to watch with captions/subtitles.

The only semblence of it here in Tucson is the Foothills theatre which uses what I call a “psuedo” captioning process. It’s rear screen projection which reflects on a gadget that you place in a drink socket on your arm rest and watch through a narrow screen that juts out from
the socket. I think they are showing one film every day on it in their theatre #1. However, it is so difficult to keep the little screen you look through steady and the words that appear on the screen through that screen are pourous (that is they don’t have a white or black background behind them like you get on tv closed caption).

Therefore the words themselves which I believe are light orange color, can kind of blend in with whatever background is showing on the screen. I’ve tried it 4 times and it is such a nuisance that I just gave up on that. Although I do know some people who are satisfied with it and use it.

I’ve let the Tower theatre people know that 15% to
25% percent of all Americans today have some hearing impairment and that will grow as todays generations keep using all the gadgets to put loud sounds into their ears. And most all of the HOH (hard of hearing) people that come to our ALOHA Tuesday (1PM) meetings have already
abandoned movie theatres and if they want to see a movie they wait till it comes out on DVD with closed captionng. The ALOHA center is on Ft Lowell a few blocks west of Swan. They are in the phone book. The Tuesday meetings are open to the public and a lot of good information on hearing problems and hearing aids are dispensed. Anyone who is shopping for hearing aids finds a lot of great information at these informatl 1 hour meetings. (no meeting charge.)

Bill Carroll

Thanks for the great info. It is unfortunate that there aren’t any plans for closed captioning, even having certain showings that are captioned would be a good idea perhaps.