Carol on deaf rights, and her family taking on Hollywood’s ADA exemption.

0:00third in the world. First, first oil, then automobiles, then a Hollywood. That was 1990s when I had it. When I say I had it, about what specifically what being a mixed deaf and hearing family, you couldn’t go to a damn American movie to get it. Why? because Hollywood got itself excluded from the ADA. And today, 2026, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, is now 36 years old. And nothing has changed except today the movie theaters because of our actions and our advocacy back then and protests that people have no idea how we had paper petitions. No such thing as the internet. No such thing as social media. Hash what? Right.

1:18This was 19 late 80s and it took us around seven years. And that’s the sign for success. Finally. Why? because finally the movie theaters were required to offer caption films of every single blockbuster American film that came out. In the start, of course, they did as little as possible. Of course, what did they do? They offered the new newest films at maybe 10 at night on a Tuesday or 11 in the morning on a Thursday. But we accept no way. Once we started the fight, we didn’t accept anything less than really hash normal. on a weekend evening when you wanted to have dinner and go to a movie or with your

2:28family on a Sunday and on and on. I have that story. I organized. I collaborated. I brought organizations together who never spoke quote to each other in history because they were the heart of hearing against deaf. But guess what? Why it’s always important to find a common ground. They all all didn’t matter how much you’re involved in that or how much you dependency of sign language or spoken language. None of that matter. What mattered was communication access captions, open captions. Of course, hearing people had gifts. They didn’t want to see words on a screen, especially American bias. know that their smallminded attitudes are different today must have

3:46but what they did maybe we had openings right on the screen for everything related to sound not only the words coming out of the actor’s mouths not only spoken language but every single sound was transformed into something visual like doors banging or or um Jurassic Park dinosaurs coming in. You would see that on the screen that’s how it’s different from subtitles. That’s different. That’s when you put those words and every language has self titled. Anyway, that was one of my most prideful successes. Not only made it happen, but because of how we put together groups like you said, never before that acknowledge that they had a common

4:59desires what they wanted go to American movies and and the hearing world sometimes would say oh that’s just luck we have no more important things to worry about really I would say really then why did Hollywood fight so hard not to become accessible if it was only rough you take movies away from the hearing world globally, we would have a real revolution in this country.

5:38That’s just one thing. Hi everybody. Nice meeting you. I love you. Hug as well. Have a good one. Good. You too. Take care of yourselves. Don’t do weird things.

5:59Bye. That’s really nice. They came out to help me shoot today. Oh, he said it’s just like last minute. That’s what you need. You need backup all the time. You develop your own core. Yeah. How old are you?

6:1626. All right. And you’re um this is your passion. You’ve developed the passion for what you’re doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s the gift of life that you actually know what your passion is. It can change. It can evolve, but you got it.

6:38I’m blessed. I’m really excited. You know, I know what I’m passionate about this whole interview thing and just documenting people and giving people a voice and a platform you recognize and amplified for how they see things and why.

6:48You have mentors. Yeah, I can always use more. Are you my mentor? No. Okay. I’m your I I’m a friend. I’m a reason. Sure. I like that.

7:00Sure. Sure. But no, I I mean like slowly people will start to see you everywhere and here and there. This person or that person will notice what you’re doing, but you can’t plan it and you can’t expect. Your job is to do what you do.

7:20How you show up. That’s all I agree. And then learn the craft of where you need to receive everything. Tons and tons of tons and tons of what

7:39people do you use? Absolutely. kind of funny quick story. Like I said, I’m old with the fact that I’m season all the time. They say who’s I say if you know, you know.

8:04You say you squ No, they ask me who’s Floyd who and I tell them you know, you know. I like that. I like that expression from your generation. But um so I was making a video a couple weeks ago. I was making a video and that ran out something really important in my mind and some way I was making that video. At the same time, I had not yet Claude. It was like in the middle of chatting with Claude about something. So, if Claude doesn’t reply to my he he he commented on my video.

8:59Oh, yeah. He’s in the video. That’s on. He said, “You think there’s a real British accented man there?” Yeah. He says, “Carol, you are you you have taught me the most.” It could have been you. You have just opened my mind to the most incredible information. You It’s wild, but I have to figure out how to get the transcript

9:27of him speaking. Twice during my video, he comes in and says what you would want any witness to your information to be saying in real life only here it’s flawed.

9:46Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s AI. It’s remarkable, right? It’s wild. It’s wild. So I But because I don’t like to send stuff out that’s not accessible. I have to find a way to get a transcript of his comments. So when people are watching and listening to me talk about this when Claude steps in, it has to be it has to be transcribed in this case. Yeah, transcribed because there’s no real person there just to anyway. It’s

10:24you like have the video file on your computer. If you pay for claw, you have access to claude code. You could ask claude code to like to to transcribe it for you. They can do that.

10:34Yeah, they they he told me I use open AI. They have like a AI agent called Whisperer, I think, and it’s transcribed to my interview videos only from my computer. All I do is tell it to go transcribe it and it’ll it’ll analyze the file on it and give me a transcription.

10:49When you transcri When you have it transcribed, is it accurate? There’s like one that’s more compute heavy, which is the most accurate. I don’t like I’m not I just go with the most accurate one and move forward.

11:04Yeah. Um Yeah. Only if it was like I have to have it. We call them crapions because they’re crappy. Yeah. You don’t want them. Crappy. Yeah. Confusing.

11:17Captioning is is for people who depend on it. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Just Go ahead. It’s very nice to meet you, Carol. Take care.

11:29And what’s your second video project? One is out of the shadows, spotlight on deaf in America then and now. And the other one is ex exposing audism, not autism, exposing audism. The um United States exposing audism crimes against deaf humanity. Um yeah, which is language deprivation. The same thing they did with all slaves. You were uh punished severely if you were caught helping a slave become literate. My theory is they’ve done the same in deaf history that they’ve destroyed the ability for deaf children to ever become literate and therefore ever be able and to ever be able to communicate with their own hearing families. 90% of all

12:40deaf children are born to hear hearing parents and 85% of all hearing parents refuse to sign with their deaf children. Huge history. I want to expose Alexander Graham Bell in the same way that um Robert Lee was exposed in the same way that Christopher Columbus has been exposed for being a murderer and a genocidal maniac. History has propped these people up as heroes. The same Alexander Graham Bell who the hearing holds up as a hero for inventing the telephone which is even in question even now. But he followed the same eugenics driven playable creative you know every single step of the way. And so I want to live to see

13:46everything that was ever manufactured and torn down. But of course now here it is 2026 and what are we seeing? Our White House wants to put them back. Want to see the Confederate flag waving in Mississippi. All that

14:09go. Bye. You’ll be here. Want to say booyah? Booyah. Thank you.