By Ellen Rugeley
The Arizona Cardinals and the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority have implemented a new plan to accommodate hearing impaired fans at the University of Phoenix Stadium. These accommodations include text captioning on video boards so that fans that have difficulty hearing the public-address system can read the play-by-play information as games are in progress.
The driver for these improvement is primarily a lawsuit brought by Michael Ubowski, a Mesa resident and advocate for the deaf. This is not the first accommodation that the Cardinals implemented for hearing impaired fans, but according to Ubowski the previous attempts to enhance the game-day experience for hearing impaired fans were less successful.
Initially, the Cardinals provided a deaf seating section that featured a limited number of seats with small monitors that displayed text captioning. “This was inadequate because it segregated people who are deaf and limited our seat choice, even limited family who may have one or more deaf relatives,” said Ubowski.
The Cardinals then tried a second system involving hand-held devices that featured captioning, but that system had a number of problems, said Ubowski.
“The smartphone was not adequate, as the captions were delayed and small, the battery life was weak and the signal strength was inconsistent. Additionally, it did not allow me to fully enjoy the game. Imagine holding a device in your hand all game while trying to enjoy a beverage or talking, using sign language, with your friends,” said Ubowski.
Ubowski is one of several hearing impaired fans who have filed suit against sports teams in an effort to ensure that hearing impaired and deaf fans can enjoy themselves at sporting events. Sean Markel and Joseph Innes, two deaf sports patrons, along with the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed two complaints against the University of Maryland for its lack of amenities for deaf fans at its sporting events.
University of Maryland Comes Under Fire
“This is an action to enforce the rights of individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and to ensure full and equal access to the defendant University of Maryland (UMD), College Park’s football and basketball games and other programs, services and activities taking place at defendant’s venues and on the University of Maryland athletic department website,” reads the official complaint filed by the NAD on behalf of Markel and Innes, who regularly attend Terrapin sporting events at Comcast Center and Byrd Stadium.
UMD Assistant Vice President of Marketing and Communications Brian Ullman released a statement in response to the first complaint saying that the university is committed to making sure Terrapin fans with disabilities can enjoy the school’s sporting events. He noted that the team already offers closed captioning through a special website that can be displayed on smart phones and tablets. “We even offer the loan of tablets on game day for those who require one,” said Ullman.
The second, amended complaint featured an incident that occurred on October 12 at Byrd Stadium during a football game against the University of Virginia where Innes and other hearing impaired fans were unable to receive captions on their devices because of a website malfunction.
Several other sports facilities now offer a variety of options for the hearing impaired. According to its website, the Baltimore Orioles stadium, Camden Yards, has listening devices for hearing impaired fans at designated fan assistance areas around the stadium. According to the Baltimore Raven’s website, M&T Bank Stadium is equipped with closed captioning through stadium-provided phones or handsets and also gives fans the option to enable their personal phones to receive closed captioning messages. George Mason University’s Patriot Center allows patrons to order a sign language interpreter or provides assisted listening on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The Most Efficient Way to Accommodate Hearing Impaired Fans
However, as pointed out by Ubowski and Innes, these accommodations, especially those including closed-captioning on smartphones and tablets, have shortcomings including technical glitches and user inconveniences. So what is the most efficient way to accommodate hearing impaired fans? For now, the answer seems to be close-captioning announcements on the stadium’s scoreboards. While closed-captioning scoreboards is costly, it can benefit more than just deaf and partially deaf fans. Other fans can read them when crowd noise is so loud that the public-address system cannot be heard.
The Cardinals eventually provided close captioning by installing two text screens that display real-time captioning under the northern and southern scoreboards at a cost exceeding $100,000, according to John Drum, the team’s vice president.
“A good amount of time was spent developing the system,” said Drum. “It’s not something you just pull off the shelf and say, ‘Here’s what we want to do.’ A lot of effort was involved.”
Initially, the boards used white lettering on a red background, keeping with the Cardinal’s color scheme, but was ineffective for people who were trying to read from a distance, said J.J. Rico, Ubowski’s attorney. A more readable color combination would have been yellow or white lettering on a black background, similar to captioning on television.
On January 18, Ubowski filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court in order to address the color combination. It was moved to U.S. District Court on February 21. On June 28, the sides reached a settlement with the Cardinal’s agreeing to use one of the recommended color combinations for the 2013 season and beyond. The cardinals opted for yellow on black.
The captioning system does an excellent job of keeping fans abreast of game-time chatter,” said Drum. “The text will continue to scroll throughout the game,” he said. “That’s anything from the announcer reporting on the plays to anything the referee says over the PA system or any of the other programming we have.”
Following a similar lawsuit, the University of Kentucky now close captions “all announcements, music, lyrics — anything vocalized over our speaker system at football games,” said Jay Blanton, the school’s executive director for public relations. According to Kentucky Deputy General Counsel T. Lynn Williamson, prior to the lawsuit, the university had put in a request for new scoreboards for Commonwealth Stadium that had the ability to digitally display anything said by the football stadium’s announcer.
“Being able to read the announcer’s words through closed captions on the scoreboard has been well received by fans,” said Williamson. “We believe that it has enhanced the average fan’s experience at games.”
The Cardinals also still offer smartphones that have captioning for fans who prefer them.
