Welcome to the launch of Hearing Loss Association of America – Kansas City Chapter Kansas: Open Caption Initiatives and ‘Kansas: Turn On the TV Captions Now!’  petition.   Please share with your friends, family, co-workers, medical health professionals and business owners that live in Kansas and out-of-state so we at local levels can build support up as Kansas Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing work from the state down to help make Kansas more deaf and hard of hearing accessible!   We will soon have a Facebook group to help track our progress.

Thank you in advance for your support!

 Kansas Open Captioning Initiatives 

Hearing Loss Association of America – Kansas City Chapter (HLAA-KC) is seeking support of Kansas Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (KCDHH)’s mandate for itself to include a possible legislative action and/or meaningful statewide change, for several open captioning initiatives. The project is called Kansas: Turn on the Captions Now! 

Such initiatives, possibly divided into several separate steps, shall include

1) Public TVs in Public Places
2) Open Captioning in Movie Theaters
3) Open Captioning at Major Public Events

KCDHH mandate will also include more amendments such as Open Captioning in Live Theaters.

HLAA-KC is seeking support from local authorities and organizations and national HLAA to enact action to work up from local level as KCDHH works from the State level down. While local levels are strengthen support, KCDHH Executive Director, Robert Cooper, would like to have local level supporters ready to help move forward and upward to towards KCDHH’s mandate. KCDHH will also be working towards legislation with several commission members as well as community members/supporters to talk with legislators and see if any show interest. Then KCDHH would keep communicating on this part on who’s interested and then figuring best approach to get that legislator to start working on getting a legislation introduced and get a vote on mandate. HLAAKC and KCDHH are employing multiple approaches at the same time while figuring out whichever appear to work out the best if not all 3 proposals.

The mandate is modeled after Portland, Turn On The Captions Now, (Founders: Jim House, Carol Studenmund, & David Viers), which successfully passed into law Dec 18, 2015. This law requires all TVs in public places have the captioning turned on during business hours. This does not cost a business anything to turn the captions on, which is a positive way to promote this. The mandate is also modeled after Hawaii’s Law Requires Movie Theaters to Offer Open Captioning, which requires where there are two or more theaters owned in the state by same person, the movie theater must show each movie that comes with captioning to be shown twice per week with open captions.

Supporters of turn on the captions of public TVs can sign the Change.Org petition:

http://bit.ly/KansasTurnOntheTVCaptionsNow

When patronizing a public place whose TV captions are turned off, use HLAAKC’s Kansas: Turn On the TV Captions Now mini campaign cards as an advocating tool and politely explain the reasons for Kansas: Turn On the TV Captions Now! Print, cut out and store cards in your car, purse or leave in your business lobby.

If you are in support of Open Captioning in Movie Theaters and Open Captioning at Major Public Events of the mandate; please send your supportive words to HLAAKC@gmail.com. Petitions for these will be created in near future.

Hearing Loss Association of America Kansas City Chapter
The Kansas City Chapter is a Public Charity Status non-profit 501(c)(3) providing information, education, support, advocacy and networking for people with hearing loss, their families and friends. 

hlaakc@gmail.com. | http://hlaakc.com/ | 913-904-0242 | Follow us:  
Support HLAA-KC through AmazonSmile or Donate through PayPal 

Are you a member of HLAA? Join Now