Captioning for the Singaporean deaf finally

I got the good news from my friend that MDA will provide captioning services for certain programmes at certain time slots. It is definitely a biggest breakthrough in the deaf history in Singapore where many deaf are at their disadvantage when they watch the English news. Currently, there are no captions being provided simultaneously with the newscasters and there is no way for the deaf and hard-of-hearing to catch the newscasters reading the news. For years, we have been fighting for the news to be incorporated with the subtitles but many a times, our request for the captioning has been flatly rejected due to the small population of the deaf and lack of fund to provide captioning service.

Earlier on this year, I have appeared in Channel U documentary "My Special Journey" which features the lives of the selected disabled and I was one of them to share the frustration and experiences of the deaf person living in Singapore. I have also mentioned that one of the main frustration borne by the deaf is that we do not understand the news programme at all and we had to depend on the hearing to tell us what is going on.

Even in USA and other well-developed countries, all the programmes including the news come with the captions and my UK friend showed me that one needs to press the button to activate the captioning function. It was such an amazing service that many deaf in other countries have been enjoying for years and yet Singapore, being considered as one of the most developing countries in Asia, do not have such rudimentary services catering to the deaf audience. It was such a shame to us.

Finally, the deaf community in Singapore can see the light though we hope that captioning can be done across all the programmes not just Channel 5, 8 but also across all the local programmes including ChannelNewsAsia channel which aims to be the top premier channel network in Asia, covering Asia mainly.

But still there is a long way to advocate more rights for the deaf. It is such a heartening to know that more and more Singaporeans are supportive of deaf and also disabled community in general. It certainly shows that Singaporeans have a big heart to show to other segment of the community!