Airline Passenger Rights Group Presses For Accessible Flight Entertainment

On March 23, 2010, the Association for Airline Passenger Rights (AAPR) sent a national sign-on letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking DOT to require accessibility of in-flight video entertainment. More than fifteen COAT affiliates signed on to the letter which asked for both captioning and video description for entertainment such as the movies and television shows now available on many plane flights. A copy of the final letter with all twenty-six signatories is attached below.

COAT commends and thanks Brandon M. Macsata, Executive Director of AAPR, for his leadership on taking up this specific disability issue. Learn more about the other issues that Association for Airline Passenger Rights works on at their website.

Sign AAPR petition!

Forward this page to a friend

Your Personal Message: *

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT).

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture your email address.

Your Email: *

Your Name: *

Send To: *

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You can only email up to 5 recipients

Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology

Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology web site.

Attachment	Size
2010_AAPR_Letter_DOT-Video Accessibility__03 23 10_FINAL.pdf	68.97 KB

Add new comment

Good to see this being

Submitted by Alex Varley (not verified) on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 19:41.

Good to see this being pushed. In Australia the biggest domestic airline Qantas, has a daily news service and this has been captioned for nearly 10 years. Originally it was done as a promotion during Hearing Awareness Week and then the airline got positive comments from business people (ie the only customers that matter!) who said: "I like those subtitles on the news because I can glance up from my work and see the headlines."

Captioning is also on a monthly magazine show (travelogue heavily Qantas branded) and on some of the in-flight entertainment - with the new hard drive systems - they provide a second version of the movie with open captions.

Virgin has a pay-per-view on seat back, but no captions. The Qantas one is included in the ticket price.

Alex Varley CEO, Media Access Australia (COAT International Affiliate)