The NFL Cardinals and the Arizona Sports & Tourism Authority "have devised a new strategy to accommodate deaf and partially deaf fans" at Univ. of Phoenix Stadium this season, according to Paul Giblin of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC. The organizations are "providing text captioning on video boards so that football fans who have difficulty hearing the public-address system can read the play-by-play information as games are in progress." The system is the "result of a year’s worth of planning and refinement, shaped in large part by a lawsuit brought by Michael Ubowski, a Mesa resident and advocate for the deaf." The Cardinals initially "provided a deaf seating section that featured a limited number of seats with small monitors that displayed text captioning." Ubowski in an e-mail wrote that a second system "involved hand-held devices that featured captioning, but that system had a number of problems." Cardinals VP/Stadium Operations John Drum said that the franchise late last season "installed two text screens that display real-time captioning under the northern and southern scoreboards" at a cost "exceeding $100,000." He said, "A good amount of time was spent developing the system. It’s not something you just pull off the shelf and say, ‘Here’s what we want to do.’ A lot of effort was involved." Ubowski and the Cardinals "reached a settlement on June 28." Drum said that the captioning system "does an excellent job of keeping fans abreast of game-time chatter." Drum: "That text will continue to scroll throughout the game. That’s anything from the announcer reporting on the plays to anything the referee says over the PA system or any of the other programming that we have." Drum said that the team "still offers smartphones that have captioning for fans who prefer them" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 10/17).
