A month before our flight to Oahu, I called United Airlines to see if they had movies with subtitles. "Yes, the movies on longer flights are subtitled," I was told.
So yesterday, we boarded the plane and I asked the crew person to make sure that the movie's subtitles were turned on. "I'll check into that," she said.
A few minutes later, we learned that the movies being shown were not going to have any subtitles on them.
So there we sat, for 9 hours, watching others enjoy the movies and seeing some of them laugh along.
And there we sat, unable to enjoy the movies, unable to laugh along. Is that right? Almost twenty years after the Americans With Disabilities Act, we don't have equal access.
I can see that I have yet another accessiblity project ahead of me. And I'm tired of it. How hard would it be to add the subtitling feature to every airline movie and allow passengers the ability to request them on the flights? I paid the same amount of money as the passenger next to me, but my family is not allowed to enjoy the same benefits as other passengers.
There will be another phone call to United this week, to attempt to get them to load subtitled movies for our flight back to the mainland. I'm supposed to be enjoying my time with my family, instead-- I'm fighting for equal access.
United, I hope you're listening. Heck, we need all the airlines to listen.
