If you live near a Warren Theatre and haven’t been able to enjoy
captioned movies there, you are in luck. The Wichita, Kansas-based theater chain is currently testing captioning equipment for all of its locations.
Warren Theatres was brought to my attention by Aaron Michael Smith, a member of the Deaf community in Oklahoma City. Smith began a campaign to advocate for captioned movie showings at the Warren’s location in Moore, Oklahoma, an Oklahoma City suburb. Click here to learn more about Smith’s campaign.
Here is the email exchange between Warren Theatre executive Dan Gray and Lipreading Mom. I plan to follow up with Gray as to the time-frame of when captioned movies will appear nationwide at Warren Theatre locations. Updates will be posted on this blog.
Message from Warren Theatre Corporate Headquarters
From: Dan Gray
Date: February 10, 2012 8:27:39 AM
Subject: RE: WarrenTheatres.com WebForm – Concern
Shanna,
Thank you for taking the time to send us your concern. Currently we offer a captioned showing in one of our theatres in the Wichita market and currently testing equipment that will offer captions for individuals for any showing at any showtime. After testing is completed we will implement the equipment in a couple of our theatres for test runs with the general public.
Sincerely,
Dan Gray
VP of Operations
Warren Theatres
Lipreading Mom’s Email to Warren Theatres
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 11:23 PM
To: corporate@warrentheatres.com
Subject: WarrenTheatres.com WebForm – Concern
Dear Warren Theatre Management,
As a follower with hearing loss, I am writing to express my concern about the lack of captioned movies at your nationwide theaters.
On several occasions, people with hearing loss have wanted to frequent your theaters, only to be unable to understand the movies you present due to lack of captions.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 34 million U.S. adults have hearing loss, it would be in your theater chain’s best interest to provide captioned movies as a way to appeal to this large group of potential viewers. Imagine the level of support and PR your network and site would receive if you featured captioned movies to appeal to this large portion of the U.S. population.
I welcome your thoughts and will be following up with you on behalf of the millions of Americans with hearing loss.
Respectfully,
Shanna Groves
Founder, Lipreading Mom Captions Campaign Member, Collaboration for Communication Access via Captioning http://LipreadingMom.com
Lipreading Mom 
I’m voting this all the way. I highly reccommend this. There are so many Hard of hearing folks that doesn’t want to acknowdlege that they can’t understand the whole movie because they’re simply hard of hearing, lacking understand of words and loudness as well. Thank you so much.
Sarah – You’re welcome, and I agree. Movie captioning is not a luxury but a necessity in the 21st century.
Try, try, try, whilst on trying is the rule that must be followed to get an authority in anything.
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s power to lead others as what he is doing from day to day to steer himself.