Why do they use a sign language interpreter when surely subtitles would have been easier, cheaper, and more universally useful, e.g. for people who want to watch with the sound muted?
South Korean TV, similarly to Japan, has a lot of on-screen text as part of the experience. Subtitles could be blacked out (i.e white or yellow text on a solid black background) but the universal idea of sign language is to help those who are visually impaired.
> for people who want to watch with the sound muted
This sounds like you think subtitles aren’t already offered.
Stairs are more universally useful, does this mean wheelchair bound people should be ignored as you equivalently suggest here with subtitles vs sign language?
Stairs are not universally useful; as you point out, they are inaccessible to wheelchair users.
Subtitles are universally accessible to any sighted person whose vision is good enough to make out the small KSL interpreter onscreen. I can’t imagine there being an appreciable amount of people who can understand the KSL interpreter but can’t read subtitles.
> Stairs are not universally useful; as you point out, they are inaccessible to wheelchair users.
That’s quite literally my entire point.
> Subtitles are universally accessible to any sighted person whose vision is good enough to make out the small KSL interpreter onscreen.
Small? The KSL interpreter is orders of magnitude larger than subtitle text.
> I can’t imagine there being an appreciable amount of people who can understand the KSL interpreter but can’t read subtitles.
I can, because I am familiar with Korean. Korean words can get very dense and tricky to read if you are vision impaired. It’s not English where letters for words are distributed horizontally. In Korean you combine vowels and consonants into syllable-blocks and N syllable-blocks make up a word. Each syllable-block could have up to 4 letters in it arranged in a 2x2 grid. Korean syllable-blocks are mono-spaced.
Here’s an example generic sentence: 안녕하세요, 저는 조단 이에요. 반갑습니다.
That is one of the first things you’ll learn in Korean and syllable-blocks like 는 and 갑 aren’t hard to read. What about words containing: 뵝 or 봥 or 붱 etc. What about syllable-blocks with all 4 spaces used? 많이, 닭 etx. You can look at the UTF8 specification to see all valid syllable-block combinations.
Are you telling me a visually impaired person is going to be able to easily distinguish those? Take a few steps back and squint with your eyes. Can you?
They already offer subtitles. They now offer sign language for those so visually impaired, but not literally 100% blind, such that they may also have access to information. You’re saying they don’t deserve it because it’s not universally useful or because you cannot imagine people like that exist?
I've wondered the same thing. The only thing I could think of is that some people can't read english, but can understand ASL. ASL is completely different from English so it can be understood by non-English speakers.
