As Netflix has ramped up its Kids & Family content in recent months, adding “Sesame Street” and not renewing its “Cocomelon” license, it’s taking steps to make that content as accessible as possible.
Netflix has entered into a partnership with SignUp Media, an online provider of sign language interpretations for movies and series, to create American Sign Language (ASL) interpretations for roughly 200 hours of Kids & Family titles on Netflix, IndieWire can report exclusively.
The interpretations will cover 73 different titles across 41 different franchises and properties, and they cover both original Netflix properties like Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” “The Sea Beast,” and “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85,” as well as licensed titles like “Pokémon Horizons,” “The Magic School Bus Rides Again,” “CoComelon,” and “The Mitchells vs. The Machines.” The interpretations begin rolling out today.
It’s a welcome addition and win for accessibility for the Netflix content, and it’s the latest in a trend of advancements in Hollywood and streaming toward more accessibility. We’ve written about HBO Max producing ASL interpretations for films like “Barbie” or series like “The Last of Us.” And it stems out of a need for something that goes beyond closed captioning. Research cited by SignUp has shown that of 466 million Deaf people worldwide, 75 percent of Deaf adults only read at a 4th or 5th grade level, and Deaf children don’t read fluently until age 12 or 13, so there’s a clear realization that captions alone don’t address the community’s needs or allow for full comprehension of a movie or show the way interpreters do.
But unlike the ASL versions of movies and shows that HBO Max has pushed out as individual titles, SignUp Media operates as an extension on Google Chrome web browsers. Rather than have to search for an ASL specific version of a title, SignUp has a plug-in that lives on your browser tab and, with a click, lets you navigate to a streamer and to specific titles for which they’ve created interpretations. The interpreter then pops up in a separate window that you can move, resize, do split screen, or pop out to a separate window, rather than be locked in one fixed place. In the future, users will be able to customize the background, which will help with many of the Deaf/Blind users of SignUp who may not be able to track hand movements in front of a green screen that are then locked within the frame.
“I originally launched SignUp with kids content just because I thought it was the most pressing need,” founder and co-CEO Mariella Satow told IndieWire. “Deaf kids were missing out on mainstream media that their hearing peers were watching.”
SignUp Media launched in 2021 with just three interpreted titles. ASL interpreters were filming their videos on their phones. Since then, the company has raised a $1 million angel round of investment, and the browser plug-in has 25,000 monthly active users with more than 350 other hours of content interpreted into ASL, BSL, and ISL. We first picked up with SignUp Media last year for The Oscar Project, which managed to get all of the year’s Best Picture nominees interpreted via ASL.
The company’s origin story is fascinating as well. Satow, who is still currently a student at Stanford, started SignUp Media when she was just 17, taking a gap year between high school and college in order to facilitate launching the company. She got the attention of a veteran entertainment executive with decades of experience, co-CEO Harriet Seitler, who spent 20 years as Oprah’s head of marketing.
Of note though, the partnership with Netflix is SignUp Media’s first partnership directly with a streamer, and Netflix identified the content it wanted SignUp to create videos for. The company managed to drastically ramp up its production process and produce all 200 hours of interpretations in a span of two months.
“We have committed significantly to a level of authenticity and to delivering at a level of quality that is unlike anything in the industry so far,” Seitler said. “For an idea whose time should have come 10, 20 years ago, we think we’re in the right place at the right time with the right level of excellence to really make a difference.”
Every hour seen on screen is roughly three to four hours of preparation and work for SignUp’s more than a dozen performers to review content, research characters, and analyze tone and pacing. SignUp also now has directors of ASL who can help research and interpret words that are unique to a show, such as song lyrics or how the heck you do the name signs of hundreds of different Pokémon. SignUp also prides itself on casting true to the characters, such as having an Asian Deaf performer signing “Wish Dragon” or a Cuban Deaf performer interpreting “Vivo.”
“At Netflix, we believe great storytelling should be accessible to everyone, and this partnership is a meaningful continuation of that commitment,” Elisa Beniero, Senior Manager of Strategy & Innovation at Netflix, said in a statement. “With ASL now joining subtitles, Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH), dubbing and Audio Description (AD) as another way members can enjoy our content, we’re ensuring our Deaf and hard-of-hearing members have more ways to experience the stories they love.”
Moving forward, SignUp hopes to partner with additional streamers and do more with Netflix. It’s working on expanding its technology offerings by bringing its functionality to TVs and mobile, and it even wants to start interpreting trailers as well to give Deaf users a better idea of the content before they start watching.
“There are probably 65 different languages on a typical streamer. Our view really is that sign language is a language; it’s not an accommodation, and many, many millions of people have sign language as their as their native language,” Seitler said. “The richness of sign language and the obstacle of not having it are both significant. So we think, from a purely positioning point of view, that’s the right thing. To show how well we could do it, and just to get SignUp out into the world, investing in the programming and signing and creating a platform of our own, it’s created the top of the funnel. While we’re engaging with the sign language community and sharing SignUp with them, we’re getting them to understand it and using that as a way to help spread word of mouth. It was the right investment to make, and I think that the streamers are starting to recognize how we’re differentiated.”
