February 15, 2000

Harvey Goldberg
Project Officer
Disability Rights Unit
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
GPO Box 5218
Sydney 1042
Australia

Personal Captioning Systems would like to provide additional comments as related to our previous submission regarding captioning. The need for captioning at movie theaters, stage theaters, opera houses, civic meetings, religious services, school presentations, anywhere people who are deaf or hard of hearing may be in attendance, is well-documented. As our population ages, more and more individuals will need and appreciate captioning. As our communities become more diverse more individuals will appreciate captioning in languages other than English.

Upon the completion of our recent survey Personal Captioning Systems is finalizing the design of our technology for use in movie theaters. We are currently developing systems for a major movie theater chain, a professional live theater venue and a professional sports arena. Building upon our live theater captioning system, movie theater captioning would be provided in the following manner:

Using a pre-captioned film, text and audio are grabbed and transmitted by infrared and radio frequency signals to a text-based display unit. With these systems, we can provide discreet captioning for every seat at every showing of a movie.

This display unit is similar to a small palm-sized TV providing text captioning. The display unit is mounted on a flexible pedestal which houses the receivers and the rechargeable battery. In its use in the live theater venue, the reading of captions from the palm-sized display has been likened to glancing down to read the speedometer in a car while driving.

These units provide "line of sight" captioning. The wearer looks directly at the action presented. The captioning "floats" in front of the wearer, allowing full view of the action on the screen.

Audio amplification
Direct connection for hearing aid or implant
Interface for audio descriptors for individuals with limited vision

For more information regarding the data collected from our survey, please contact:

Dr. Murray Fisher, Co-founder
Personal Captioning Systems. LLC
9401 North Nashville
Morton Grove, IL 60053

Voice, Fax, TTY: 847-965-6544
FishrAssoc@aol.com