A new ordinance requiring all Bloomington businesses and public places to activate closed captioning on televisions will start Jan 1, 2025.
Michael Shermis, director of the Bloomington/Monroe County Human Rights Commission, said the Indiana Association of the Deaf had been trying to pass the ordinance at the state level.
“(The Indiana Association of the Deaf) said, ‘We are not being very successful at a state level, the legislature is not particularly warming to the idea, and we're just not going anywhere with it,’” Shermis said. “So we've decided we want to do it at the local level. And lo and behold, Bloomington is the ideal city to start with.”
After about a year of working with groups such as the Council for Community Accessibility, AARP, and the Chamber of Commerce to gain support, the ordinance went to the mayor’s desk, then to the City Council for approval.
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Shermis said the ordinance will be complaint driven, meaning someone would have to make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission to enforce the measure. There are no fines for failing to comply, and many cases will be handled with a simple conversation with management.
“I, as the director, will frequently play out in front of it before it gets to a full-blown case, and talk to people and say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, there's an ordinance for this, and you do need to do something in this case,” Shermis said.
Holly Elkins with the Indiana Association of the Deaf brought the idea to Shermis. She said in a statement that to her knowledge, Bloomington is the state’s first municipality to pass the ordinance.
“The best aspect of the Bloomington captioning ordinance is it proactively promotes universal accessibility for a broad range of groups across the city,” Elkins said. “Diversity is a part of our world. Authentic inclusion is a choice.”
She said that moving forward towards creating a statewide ordinance “requires a sincere commitment to meaningful accessibility and inclusion from legislators.”
