Gogo adds close captioning on all inflight entertainment

Gogo LLC announces that they have reached an agreement with the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) to provide close captioning on all of their in-flight streaming content. The full release can be found at the NAD website with an excerpt below. 

Deaf and hard of hearing airline passengers will soon have close captioning for on-demand in-flight entertainment videos.  The National Association of the Deaf (NAD), a non-profit civil rights organization of, by, and for deaf and hard of hearing individuals, and Gogo LLC, the global leader in providing broadband connectivity solutions and wireless entertainment to the aviation industry, have reached a historic agreement for Gogo to make closed captioning available for 100 percent of programming content sourced by Gogo and streamed through its on-demand in-flight entertainment service, Gogo Vision.

This is the first agreement of its kind with an in-flight entertainment company, and is the result of the parties’ mutual intent to increase access for people who are deaf and hard of hearing to movies and television that are viewed in flight on U.S. domestic flights.  Passengers using their own personal Wi-Fi enabled devices can access a Gogo Vision server located on aircraft of certain airlines that contain an extensive library of movies and television shows.

Under the agreement, Gogo has now added technology that will enable customers to have the option to display closed captions for content with closed captions sourced by Gogo; Gogo has also begun sourcing new content with closed captions where available; and Gogo will replace all of its existing sourced content with content that has closed captions through a phase-in process that will be completed by June 30, 2017.  All captions will be consistent with Federal Communications Commission standards for completeness, accuracy, synchronicity, and placement.

“We are excited to work with NAD to offer Gogo Vision’s entire library of movies and TV sourced by Gogo to passengers who are deaf and hard of hearing,” said Ash ElDifrawi, Gogo’s chief commercial officer.  “Watching movies on a passenger’s own device has become a very popular product for Gogo and we are excited to provide access to this product to the deaf and hard of hearing.”