Hawaii News

Hearing, visually impaired enjoy film

By Michael Tsai mtsai@staradvertiser.com
Jan. 4, 2016

KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

“Star Wars” moviegoers gathered in the Paina Room at Dave & Buster’s after the movie.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Pono Tokioka, 20, the deaf son of Representative Jimmy Tokioka, who was instrumental in getting the bill passed that makes Hawai’i the first state to require open captioning and audio description movie showings for deaf and visually impaired movie goers, speaks in sign language about how great it was to go to the movies with his dad in Dave & Buster’s Paina Hale Room after watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens on January 2, 2016 in Honolulu, Hi.
Lucasfilm

Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca and Harrison Ford as Han Solo are shown in a scene from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” The film was screened Saturday at Ward 16 in the first legally mandated open-captioning, audio-description public movie screening in the nation.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Colin Whited, the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing project specialist with the Pacific Disabilities Center at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, talked about other bills that need to be passed for hearing-impaired children in Hawaii.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

State Rep. James Tokioka, above right, who was instrumental in getting the open-captioning bill passed, talked about how wonderful it was to enjoy the new “Star Wars” movie with his hearing-impaired son, Pono Tokioka, (not shown), as they celebrated at Dave & Buster’s after the screening. Interpreter Jan Fried is at left.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Rainna Beal, 9, left, and Maverick Fiti, 10, who are hearing-impaired, describe their experience of watching “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” with emcee and former president of the Aloha Association of the Deaf Colleen Cidade. Below left, “Star Wars” moviegoers gathered in the Paina Room at Dave & Buster’s after the movie.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

“Star Wars” moviegoers gathered in the Paina Room at Dave & Buster’s after the movie.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Pono Tokioka, 20, the deaf son of Representative Jimmy Tokioka, who was instrumental in getting the bill passed that makes Hawai’i the first state to require open captioning and audio description movie showings for deaf and visually impaired movie goers, speaks in sign language about how great it was to go to the movies with his dad in Dave & Buster’s Paina Hale Room after watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens on January 2, 2016 in Honolulu, Hi.
Lucasfilm

Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca and Harrison Ford as Han Solo are shown in a scene from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” The film was screened Saturday at Ward 16 in the first legally mandated open-captioning, audio-description public movie screening in the nation.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Colin Whited, the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing project specialist with the Pacific Disabilities Center at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, talked about other bills that need to be passed for hearing-impaired children in Hawaii.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

State Rep. James Tokioka, above right, who was instrumental in getting the open-captioning bill passed, talked about how wonderful it was to enjoy the new “Star Wars” movie with his hearing-impaired son, Pono Tokioka, (not shown), as they celebrated at Dave & Buster’s after the screening. Interpreter Jan Fried is at left.
KAT WADE / SPECIAL TO THE HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

Rainna Beal, 9, left, and Maverick Fiti, 10, who are hearing-impaired, describe their experience of watching “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” with emcee and former president of the Aloha Association of the Deaf Colleen Cidade. Below left, “Star Wars” moviegoers gathered in the Paina Room at Dave & Buster’s after the movie.

Pono Tokioka’s take on the new “Star Wars” movie — “It was awesome” — was largely in step with popular and critical reception of the film. Read more

Pono Tokioka’s take on the new “Star Wars” movie — “It was awesome” — was largely in step with popular and critical reception of the film.

More significantly, Tokioka’s actual experience of the film was also, for the first time ever, mostly the same as the rest of the theater-going public.

Tokioka, 20, was among about 100 hearing and visually impaired individuals who gathered at Consolidated Theatres Ward 16 on Saturday afternoon for the first legally mandated open-captioning, audio-description public movie screening in the nation.

“I enjoyed everything I saw,” Tokioka said via an American sign language interpreter. “It was awesome to be able to follow along with the movie like everyone else.”

The screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was the culmination of a decade-long effort on the part of the Aloha State Association of the Deaf and other organizations and individuals that advocate for broader and more substantive inclusion of deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind and visually impaired people in public spaces and came as a result of legislation introduced by Tokioka’s father, state Rep. James Tokioka (D, Wailua-Hana- maulu-Lihue).

The bill, signed by Gov. David Ige in May, mandates that any motion picture theater with at least two locations in the state is required to provide open captioning and descriptive narration, upon request, during at least two showings per week of each motion picture shown at the theater for one week or more.

The law took effect Friday.

“It’s a testament to the people of Hawaii that we were able to become the first state in the nation to do this,” said Colin Whited, deaf and hard-of-hearing specialist with the Research Corp. of the University of Hawaii. “It was a community push.”

Unlike closed captioning, which requires deaf or hard-of-hearing audiences to wear special glasses to see specially embedded text on the screen or to read from a monitor affixed to the seat in front of them, open captioning provides a full transcript of the dialogue on-screen, visible to the entire audience.

Descriptive narration allows those with visual impairments to listen to verbal descriptions of visual content.

For Pono Tokioka, who had given up on watching movies at the theater, the new accommodations are game-changing.

“My dad would try to get me to go to movies, but I’d say no,” Tokioka said. “Why waste money going to the theater when I wouldn’t be able to understand what was going on or enjoy myself? Now I’ll probably go to a lot more movies.”

The Tokiokas are well versed in fighting for fair inclusion.

As a Little League Baseball player, Tokioka made it to an all-star playoff game only to have his father, who had been serving as his interpreter in the dugout, banned from assisting him. The family complained, and the U.S. Justice Department subsequently ruled that PONY Baseball/Softball Inc. had violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. PONY later settled with the family and rewrote its rules to allow sign-language interpreters in its dugouts.

Tokioka, a gifted all-around athlete, is a member of the University of Hawaii golf team.

Whited said the timing was right as the previously prohibitive cost of burning captions directly onto individual frames of film has given way to simple, inexpensive digital captioning. The effort also gained the support of fellow Kauai legislator Rep. Derek Kawakami (D, Hanalei-Princeville- Kapaa), who tried using the special closed-captioning glasses and found them lacking.

Whited, a graduate of Gallaudet University, the renowned private university for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, said the new law could directly benefit the 190,442 Hawaii residents who have hearing difficulties and inspire other states to enact similar legislation.

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