Captions help everyone, in the same way curb cuts and ramps are so useful. We all can benefit from captions in a noisy restaurant or on an airplane, but for the 36 million American adults reporting some amount of hearing loss ¹, and that’s 17% of us, captions are critical.

Including captions where people are speaking is logical. It makes good sense.  The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires it in lots of situations.  Adults and children who can’t hear well or who have auditory processing challenges, or people whose native language is not English, need the same access to information that people who hear well have.

1. National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorder (NIDCH)