Deaf teen finds unsuspecting ally at Rockville cinema

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Deaf teen finds unsuspecting ally at Rockville cinema - WTOP.com

This Thanksgiving weekend, Lana Pavlovskaya is proud and grateful.

She's proud that her 16-year-old daughter Vika, who is deaf, is able to advocate for herself and her friends.

And she's grateful that a manager at a local movie theater stuck by his decision to make sure that technology for deaf and hearing-impaired customers should function as needed.

Here's what happened:

Vika and two deaf friends decided to go see the new Adam Sandler movie at Rockville's Regal Cinemas. They chose that location because they knew the theater had the technology to synchronize the dialogue on screen with captions via a handheld device, like an iPad. Captionfish.com provides a list of participating theaters.

The girls were excited, they'd been looking forward to seeing the comedy. But when the movie started, there was a problem. The captioning system wasn't working. The girls went to the manager, who apologized and restarted the movie. Still, the captioning wasn't working. Once again, the manager delayed the film to see to the glitch.

That angered some customers. One woman, according to Pavlovskaya, became so angry she told the girls to leave, and demanded the manager start the movie immediately. Pavlovskaya says the manager responded by saying, "Well, these girls paid money too. So we need to fix it and you will have to wait."

The third time, the movie started with the captions. Afterward, the manager, who wanted to make sure the girls felt welcome in the future, offered them free tickets to another show of their choosing. Pavlovskaya said his decision and that generous offer prompted her to contact WTOP.

"I think it can be a good example for anybody."

She explains her daughter lost her hearing in infancy. As the parent of a child with a disability, she wishes more people could be like that manager, and put themselves in someone else's shoes.

"For me, I feel very good, and when I feel good I want to do something good in return. And that's the chain I think we want to follow: to make people happy, and share this happiness."

WTOP contacted Regal Cinemas in Rockville, and confirmed the information. They identified the manager on duty that day as "Eric." Pavlovskaya says he has her appreciation.
 
Wow, how nice! Rockville would be WAY out of my way, but I'll check out the other Regal Cinemas near me.

I had not heard of this captioning service that works on the individual's hand-held device. Yet another reason to buy an iPad, I guess (so far I have been resisting). Wonder if this would work on the Nook tablet...
 
I used to live in Rockville..i have been to that theater. Nice to read a positive story about it. :)
 
That's a wonderful story... I'm glad the manager recognized the importance of the movie being accessible to all customers.
 
Because of this story, I went there yesterday to watch a movie. I was thinking I would need to find the information/help/service desk so I could ask how the captioning worked, how to get it set up on my iPhone (I assumed that was what they used due to the article). So I was a little flustered that I couldn't get someone to tell me (it was very, very busy Saturday with many people flowing in since several popular movies were starting simultaneously) where the information/help/service desk was, but eventually I found someone that wasn't busy and they informed me that I didn't need anything from them to see the captions. Luckily, the captions were right on the screen: open captioning (versus sent to my iPhone or other device) and I didn't miss any or the movie from the small delay. Overall, much better experience than some places that use rear windows, which I feel are too much of a hassle, but are preferable to nothing (too difficult to read when the device is moved below the screen as you need to jump back and forth from the screen to the text or when the device shows the text over the screen since the background can change to something similar to the color of the text and there is no guarantee that it won't change to that kind of background).
 
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