Deaf NJ Sports Fan Has High Praise For 2 Local Arenas: Op-Ed

NEWARK, NJ — The following op-ed comes courtesy of a Patch Newark community member. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Gary Noll. I’m deaf, grew up in a deaf household, and am an avid sports fan. I received a 2019 NJ Governor Jefferson Award based on my advocacy about the importance of having closed captioning for the public address announcer and other accessibility at sporting events in New Jersey and Metro New York area.

https://www.stadiumjourney.com/stadiums/taking-sights-and-sounds-for-granted-at-sports-arenas

https://issuu.com/tott/docs/tott_summer_19_fullfile/32

https://www.stadiumjourney.com/stadiums/gary-noll-closed-captioning-advocate

I’d personally like to give a shout out that Prudential Center in Newark, the home to New Jersey Devils professional hockey and Seton Hall University men’s basketball, which is believed to be one of the only Tri-State arenas that has four closed captioning (CC) areas on scoreboards in the corner.

https://www.nj.com/rutgersbasketball/2020/03/you-crave-sports-with-coronavirus-shutdown-but-not-as-much-as-this-special-rutgers-and-seton-hall-fan.html

https://www.app.com/story/sports/college/2015/02/26/rutgers-basketball-seton-hall-basketball-closed-captioning-deaf-fans/24057805/

In the addition, Red Bull Arena in Harrison, which is home to the NY Red Bulls men’s professional soccer team and the NJ/NY Gotham FC women’s professional soccer team, have big captions on two scoreboards in the corner.

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2018/08/hold_closed_captions_a_success_at_red_bulls_arena.html

https://patch.com/new-jersey/hoboken/deaf-sports-fan-nj-bravo-captions-red-bull-arena

Both support inclusivity to include closed captioning on their social media platforms such as Facebook as well. Fans can also use mobile captioning through their smartphones and tablets by logging in to mobilecap.net or https://captionedtext.com/client/Event.aspx during live games.

Closed captioning to TV concession in arena venues are also in the works. Some already have it during New Jersey Devils games.

Both also support inclusivity and made big strides to have closed captioning during women’s sports as well. Red Bulls Arena became even more inclusive when the NJ/NY Gotham FC began playing all of their home games there a few years ago. Red Bulls Arena has hosted past women’s sporting events such as the SheBelieves Cup and USWNT friendly soccer matches, and they have always had closed caption public address announcer service for those games.

In my humble opinion, if the New Jersey Generals, the franchise of the United States Football League (USFL) need to find a home in New Jersey, they should play at Red Bulls Arena … it’s the perfect sport venue to play.

During the coronavirus pandemic around late 2020 and 2021, when few or limited fans were in attendance during that time, how nice it was that both the Prudential Center and Red Bulls Arena still provided closed caption service, no matter how many fans were in attendance.

Most New Jersey and metro New York sports venues have only two closed caption spaces on scoreboards, or ribbon boards but small CC read boards. The only way deaf fans can read closed caption messages better is if they sit in the lower levels and closer to CC boards. I still ask for four big CC on the boards so it’s easily readable for deaf fans, who can then sit everywhere.

We rarely have CC technical issues during games and when it happens, they always respond and act on it so quickly and resolve the issues. We are lucky we have awesome arena staffs that can do an awesome job.

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