When I was growing up, I was obsessed with watching TV. I would rush home after school and wake up early on weekends, just to soak up the magic of storytelling on screen. But as a child with partial deafness, I could only catch about 70% of the dialogue; the rest was guesswork. Like being in a foreign country, winging it with limited vocab, not having full access is tiring and everything is tinged with a sense of alienation.
One day in the early 80s my parents brought home a new TV set. Up flicked a page of blocky coloured digital text – Teletext. They pressed page 888 and subtitles suddenly appeared. It was a revolution, my own personal moon landing. The half stories were unlocked. I had full access.
