I'm a teacher and I'd love to be able to show part of the live broadcast during the day of the inauguration. I teach students who are both Deaf and hearing and therefore need to include captions or subtitles. I'm unable despite e-mails to get responses to the question in my title. Traditionally, there's an A.S.L. interpreter present at the inauguration itself, but whether they are on camera is always dicey.
Let's get it straight: Deaf people are part of this country too - and Barack Obama has done more than most, even before assuming his new role, to include us in his campaign. His campaign made the effort to find TTY's and dialed hundreds of "dead" numbers on the off-chance that there might be a Deaf person using a TTY at the other end. They worked with Project ReadOn to subtitle campaign videos.
But most people will be broadcasting the events live - and live events are rarely captioned because of the difficulty. So it's a relevant question - especially if there's an A.S.L. interpreter, since people might (will) say "We did something!" and sit around in smug pride instead of realizing that providing access to people in the room isn't the same as providing access for people in the nation.
So please - if you know anything or have contacts - let me know. I'll spread the word. The Deaf community will be grateful for the info.
I'll check on this often as I can today-but I have to teach.