Letter of the day: Two candidates remembered to 'talk' to every voter

Last update: November 28, 2008 - 12:47 PM

We would like to thank the candidates for office who captioned their online and television ads. Each election year the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans asks each candidate running for statewide or national office to pledge to caption their ads. This year only Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken and DFL House candidate Ashwin Madia made the pledge and followed through. Madia had all of his ads captioned, and Franken captioned every one of his TV ads and all of his online videos. The cost of captioning a TV ad is only $200 for up to a 15-minute ad. Online captioning can be done by a staff member for free or purchased for a little as $10 a minute. With elections as close as the U.S. Senate race, 500,000 Minnesotans with a hearing loss ought be a good enough reason to caption. Also, thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic candidates for state office in Minnesota who are complying with the new state law that requires candidates to caption their ads on TV and online and to post scripts of radio ads. It makes a big difference to those of us who are deaf and hard of hearing or deafblind.

ELISE KNOPF, MINNEAPOLIS;

CHAIR, COMMISSION OF DEAF, DEAFBLIND AND HARD OF HEARING MINNESOTANS

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