New Zealanders demand closed captioning for Deaf MP

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Wednesday, 29 February 2012 09:34am

Over 5,000 New Zealanders have signed a petition calling for closed captioning to be provided for the country’s first Deaf MP, Mojo Mathers, during question time in Parliament

Parliamentary Speaker Lockwood Smith came in for much public criticism when he earlier told Mathers, a Greens MP who was born profoundly deaf, that she would have to pay for note-takers out of her office budget. The cost for this would be NZ$20,000 to NZ$30,000 per year.

Prior to her election in 2011, Mathers told a reporter hat she would probably need “a combination of electronic note taking, which basically they already do with the Hansard”, as well as a sign language interpreter. New Zealand Sign Language is the country’s third official language, but unlike English and Maori, has never been represented in Parliament.

Merrin McLeod, who created the Change.org petition, said, ''I can't see any way that it is morally or legally defensible to not provide fully for Mojo Mathers. Captioning would solve that problem and provide accessibility for others.'' In her petition, she notes that, The New Zealand Parliament has an obligation to make debates accessible to the people it represents and the representatives who serve them.”

The matter will now be referred to the Parliamentary Services Commission on 7 March. For more information, see this article in the Dominion.Post.

Mojo Mathers is not the first deaf politician who has faced the challenge of keeping up with parliamentary debates. In the late 70s, the British politician Jack Ashley used a system devised for him by Independent Television in which a stenographer, using a phonetic keyboard and computer, typed House of Commons debates as they were in progress. The text would then appear on a small television screen in front of Ashley. This was the prototype for live ‘stenocaptioning’, which is now used around the world on television and for conferences and other events.   


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