Weekly 3 - Reading Response

Media list:

All Technology is Assistive Artist Christine Sun Kim Rewrites Closed Captions

In ‘All Technology is Assistive’, an interesting point is made, that using the term ‘assistive tech’ creates an illusory barrier between tech made for use to aid people with specific “diagnostic impairments”, culturally designated as needing special attention, and tech made for use to aid a broad range of people. Closed captions are a great example of this, as Christine Sun Kim shows, in that they’re made with the goal of allowing deaf people to experience media the same way as people who can hear. In Sun Kim’s video, she shows that deaf people aren’t trying to experience the world the way hearing people do, and would rather if subtitles catered to a deaf person’s way of experiencing the world. For example, Sun Kim often transcribes ‘sounds’ that are actually interactions with her other senses, such as touch and smell, which matter more to a deaf person’s experience of a moment or event. In a world without the separating term ‘assistive tech’, closed captions might be written the way Sun Kim portrays them, which could actually create heightened media immersion for all people, whether they can hear or not.