ADA Stadium Committee's Historical Achievements

TEMPE, Ariz.-- Last season Arizona State University's Sun Devil Stadium became the first venue in the nation to serve deaf and hard of hearing football fans with open-captioning at home football games.

This service allowed deaf and hard of hearing fans to follow along with the public address announcer during the game, as every spoken word is textualized on Sun Devil Stadium's enormous TV board. The service is similar to closed-captioning, which is commonly used in the television industry to serve the deaf. This benefits the rest of the fans, too, when the crowd becomes too loud to hear the PA announcer.

ASU's Department of Intercollegiate Athletics established the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Stadium Committee to facilitate open-captioning, among other services for the disabled, i.e., ramps for fans in wheelchairs. The committee's primary objective is to make available and accessible athletic events to patrons with special needs. This means that open-captioning could also be featured at Wells Fargo Arena and Packard Stadium, as well as other campus buildings where events are staged.

Michael Ubowski, a deaf member of the committee, chaired the subcommittee in charge of the innovative open-captioning. Sandy Mintz, a hard-of-hearing member, chaired another subcommittee which launched assistive listening devices for fans who have partial hearing loss.

ADA Stadium policies and services are listed on the Sun Devil Stadium Information Sheet which is available to all fans on-line and from the ASU athletic ticket office.