Marlee Matlin Slams Delta For Not Having Closed Captioning On Flights

Marlee Matlin is not happy with the accessibility options offered by Delta, and she let them know about it on Twitter.

The actor and deaf activist tweeted on Thursday that she was “sad” that her “preferred airline” didn’t offer “closed captions for deaf and hard of hearing flyers.” She accompanied the tweet with a video of her signing on the airplane and the hashtags “#noaccess #stillwaiting for #ADAcompliance.”

Her post has racked up more than 35,000 Likes and nearly 8,000 retweets as of Friday morning. Several disability advocates tweeted in support of Matlin, including other deaf and hard of hearing people who shared their own frustration with the lack of closed captions on flights.

The airline responded to the “Switched at Birth” actor’s tweet, thanking her for “keeping us accountable as we work to create more inclusive experiences,” before adding that “most” of their aircraft with “seatback screens have closed captioning.”

“We apologize that your flight does not have this feature yet & we appreciate your patience as we work to upgrade our fleet,” Delta said, although some Twitter users pointed out that closed captioning should be considered a basic accommodation, not an “upgrade.”

In another tweet, the airline added that they have an “alternative option” where flyers can “access closed captioned Delta Studio content via Gogo Entertainment app on your personal electronic device.” 

Matlin responded by asking why audio description is “a feature of accessibility available but not captioning? And how would I have known that??”

“Accessibility is important to us and while most of our aircraft with seatback screens have a wide variety of closed captioned content, unfortunately Ms. Matlin’s flight has not yet been upgraded to include this feature,” Delta said in a statement to HuffPost on Friday. “We apologize and are working diligently to upgrade our remaining fleet.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Delta.