Disability Rights Florida is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis and his executive office for not having a sign language interpreter during coronavirus press conferences. Disability Rights Florida is filing the lawsuit. Its lead attorney says DeSantis is breaking the law.
When viewers tune in to watch the governor, someone is missing. It's the person responsible for translating the governor's words into American Sign Language (ASL). Disability Rights Florida's lead attorney Ann Siegel says some Floridians who are deaf and hard of hearing depend on that interpreter.
"There are some individuals that studies show are approximately at a four to six grade level in reading, so closed captioning would be written normally at a higher level of reading, and it's not as accurate."
Siegel says closed captioning can be hard to understand because sometimes it skips words or uses the wrong ones. Siegel explains her group tried contacting DeSantis several times, but he never answered, prompting the lawsuit.
"In a perfect world, we would like him to immediately start including ASL interpreting services in all of his news briefings."
A similar lawsuit was filed against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he didn't have an interpreter during his daily TV COVID-19 briefings. Instead, viewers had to go online to see the interpreter. In that case, a federal judge ruled that Cuomo had to have the interpreter in the same frame as him while on TV.
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