Did you know around a third of the deaf and severely hard of hearing community deal with low literacy? Reading is not an easy skill to learn when so much of its basics rely on the study of sounds. That’s where American Sign Language (ASL) comes in. The visual language helps bridge the language barrier for deaf communities, yet it’s closed captioning that is more readily available on streaming services like Disney+. With that, the streamer -- along with Marvel Studios -- gave ASL speakers an exciting gift -- a version of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film that utilizes the language.
In honor of National American Sign Language Day, Marvel announced that for the first time ever, one of its movies -- 2015’s Ant-Man -- now has an ASL version and is available to stream on the website and app. For those with a Disney+ subscription, when you click on the first Paul Rudd-led Marvel movie on the platform and go to the “Extras” tab on the menu before you click play, you can view the ASL version of the superhero origin story. It features ASL performer Jac Cook in the right bottom corner offering translations throughout the movie, like so:
