Sir, – Having a family member who is profoundly deaf, I am no stranger to watching the television with subtitles. However, I always have the sound on too. I think that I was tricked into thinking that our national broadcaster RTÉ and Virgin Media were doing a great job when it came to subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing people. My sister, who is deaf, laughed at me when I said this. While subtitles have definitely improved, they still leave a lot to be desired.
I muted the television today to test this. Ireland AM gave me a headache from the non-coherent subtitles that were present. Watching the news confused me, even though I knew from listening to the radio earlier what they were talking about. One of the popular pre-recorded “soaps” did not have any subtitles. Surely it is easy enough to have coherent subtitles on most programmes to serve our deaf population, and hearing-impaired older adults also. – Yours, etc,
TARA RUDD,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.