Soon after my junior year at Williams College, I went to see a movie with some friends at a local Regal Cinema theater.

Yes, a real movie at a real theater.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to one, because I have to first check that I’m interested in the movie and that — more importantly — the theater provides captions.

But on that day, I had the fortune of trying out these closed-captioning glasses. Instead of having the captions appear on the screen with the movies, they are essentially projected holographically by the glasses. Thus, moving the glasses (e.g. by rotating one’s head) will cause the captions to shift. Apparently, this is all new technology that’s been finalized in 2012 or 2013. Even though I’ve only used them once, I can already see some of the benefits and drawbacks to this device.

Pros

First of all, these captioning glasses clearly work. It can take a couple of minutes to get used to it, though, since the captions won’t be in the same spot all the time unless one has abnormal neck-stabilizing ability.

But the even bigger benefit is that caption services can be provided for all movies at supported Regal theaters. Now, we won’t have to deal with hearing people ranting about annoying captions clogging up the screen. Instead, they’ll be complaining about the quality of their seats or other picayune matters.

Cons

While I didn’t really have any issues with stabilizing the captions, I can see why some would feel uncomfortable with a non-stable reading location. I also remember that there was a slight issue with the color of the text. I believe the text is some yellow-green color (I’m colorblind, so this is my best guess) and it can sometimes blend in with the screening.

Finally, since I wear prescription glasses, I had to take some extra time to adjust the captioning glasses so they could fit outside of the ones I wear daily. People with especially large or bulky prescription glasses may have a more difficult time wearing a second pair of glasses.

Conclusion

This is yet another example as to how today’s world has become unquestionably more accessible to deaf people than in previous eras. It’s also what I would consider a deaf-friendly tactic. Now, the next step would be to accomplish the harder task of having these glasses for everyday use. That means if I’m wearing them, the captions should display what someone is saying to me in real time. (Actually, this is theoretically impossible, but we need to aim high, right?)