By Russ Kane, Volunteer with the Lipreading Mom Internet Captions Campaign
Suze Orman is one of the most prominent financial writers and TV personalities in our American society. She has sold millions of books and she has so many fans. She first started as a waitress in Berkeley, California and became a financial adviser for Merrill Lynch. She worked her way up to vice president at Prudential Bache Securities in 1983 and founded the Suze Orman Financial Group in 1987. She got her first TV big break as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2008 after hosting her show, “Can I Afford It?” (which later became a staple of her TV show, “The Suze Orman Show,” which is still running on CNBC to spectacular ratings). She now writes columns about money for O Magazine and is a regular columnist for The Costco Connection and many other newspapers.
In January of 2012, Suze debuted a new six-episode show called “America’s Money Class with Suze Orman” on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The draw to this show is the grand prize of $50,000 after her viewers take the final exam. Now, this is a wonderful opportunity for people to learn more about finances and how to save for retirement. Alas, deaf viewers are unable to partake in this contest unless they subscribe to an upgrade in their cable company. For example, I would have to pay an extra $35 a month to be able to watch OWN on my Time Warner account. So, I decided to downgrade to basic cable because many channels are not captioning their programs. However, since I do not have OWN, the only way I can watch Suze’s show is on OWN’s website, but they refuse to caption her show.
What can you do to speak up about this travesty? Go to her Website to email her. Or go to her Facebook page (Suze Orman) and write on her wall like I did. She has told me that she will not be able to caption her show. With the new FCC rules coming out this summer, she will have to.
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Join the Lipreading Mom Captions Campaign, and find out how to advocate for online captions, like Russ did.
Lipreading Mom 
This is under discussion in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Attorneys group I belong to. Keep pushing on your end.
Thank you for discussing this in your group. Please keep me posted on any new developments, as you learn of them.
We’re all over captioning issues, not just her, but others. Like Netflix. So what happens by acting as a “private attorney general” by deaf/HoH lawyers is often below the radar until such time as it is “fixed.” We’ve been on this and other issues for some time.
I am shocked by her response. No, not really. Look for me on her facebook page.
Debbie – Thanks for contacting Suze Orman via Facebook. All advocacy efforts count here!
I wonder what will happen with movies on airlines. I fly a lot for my job and would love to have my in-flight movies captioned.
Thanks for your post
Not about Orman, but an indication of what goes on about cc for the deaf in the US. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/11297.htm
/snip/ Arlene Mayerson ’74, who teaches disability rights law at Berkeley Law, is the lead attorney on a federal lawsuit that charges Netflix with violating the American Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to provide captioning on its streaming video content.
/snip/
The Orman show is an “early days” problem. Plus word has it that the Winfrey network is not doing well. Winfrey tweeted people who were Neilsen ratings families to tune in to her network and got slammed for it by the powers that be as you’re not allowed to do that in the ratings game. So perhaps Winfrey has not allocated funds to cc the programs produced by her network an that is who we should be looking to as opposed to the star of the show. Orman may have nothing to do with the production aspect at all – just paid talent.