short story C A P T I O N C O N N E C T I O N
It was lunch break. A group of kids were gathered around a tablet, watching their favorite youtube videos.
Mark, a quiet boy with a hearing impairment. he has hearing aids, but talking videos are hard for him to follow.
He thinks
to himself,
“I wish I could join, but i probably won’t understand what they’re watching”.
Maya notices, “Hey guys I think mark wants to watch with us.”
“But the videos we have, they have too much talking”.
“Wait!” maya said, tapping the screen. “youtube has captions!”
She turned on autocaptions, and the words popped up at the bottom of the video. Everyone leaned in, amazed at how easy it was.
They waved mark over. He hesitated, until they smiled and held out the tablet.
“We turned on captions,” Maya said. “Now you can watch with us!”
Mark’s face lit up. He sat beside them, eyes glued to the screen as the captions matched every joke and every sound he couldn’t hear clearly before.
For the rest of lunch, they laughed together—no one left behind, no one left out. And from that day on, captions were always on.
