Starting this week, families are able to watch 73 Netflix kids and family shows and movies with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretations.
Netflix has teamed up with SignUp Media to bring the interpretations to the platforms. The 73 interpreted titles total around 200 hours of content, according to a report from IndieWire, and include both Netflix-owned and licensed titles. Some of those titles include Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, KPop Demon Hunters, Pokémon Horizons, and The Magic School Bus Rides Again.
In addition to Netflix, SignUp has already partnered with services including YouTube, Peacock, and Disney+.
While subtitles are already available on these services, adding ASL makes the content more accessible. Not only is ASL is its own language, but adding a human interpreter allows for including tone and emotion to better convey what the characters are saying. It’s also important for younger kids who haven’t learned to read yet.
“Deaf children may not read yet, or read fast enough to keep up with closed captioning, and deaf adults want to watch content in their native language,” Mariella Satow, founder of SignUp Media, said in a quote to Parents. “Family movie night should mean everyone experiences the story together, not one person doing the work of making it accessible while everyone else watches.”
For the project, SignUp recruited deaf and native ASL signers. The company took the title and the character into consideration when choosing the signer for each role, providing both accessibility and representation to audiences.
SignUp offers a Google Chrome extension to provide the service. Users can install the plug-in for their browser. Users can click on a title to navigate to the streaming service, when a pop up puts the interpreter in a separate window that can be moved and resized.
You can find the full list of titles with ASL interpretations across services on SignUp’s website.