A hole in the severe weather warning system: The limited access for the deaf and hard of hearing

This presentation documents the difficulty deaf and hard-of-hearing (HoH) people have receiving severe weather information during watches and warnings. A survey of over 150 deaf and HoH residents of Minnesota and Oklahoma demonstrates that these people cannot hear sirens, cannot receive weather warnings from radio, and have tremendous difficulty picking up weather information from television.

The problems with television broadcasts are further clarified since there is no real-time closed-captioning of either weather segments during regularly scheduled news broadcasts or special reports involving severe weather. The deaf and HoH people surveyed also have difficulty with the “crawls” since, in Minnesota and Oklahoma, the weather information is obscured by closed-captioning of the current program. These problems lead a large percentage of those surveyed to rely either on word-of-mouth or on looking out the window in times of severe weather.

The survey further indicates that deaf and HoH people put the responsibility of the weather warning shortcomings directly on local television stations. Their number one preference in receiving warnings is to have all weather broadcasts captioned in real time and to have the “crawls” moved to the top of the screen so they are not obscured by program captioning.