I love a sport that feels like it doesn’t always love me back.
I look to this game for comfort, and community. It tends to give me the opposite sometimes and for that, I love it too.
Discomfort, in today’s context, means that hopefully change is coming.
I am part of a community that is often an afterthought in many areas of life. Although there are changes everyday, there is room to grow. That is what I will address today.
Fans of hockey come in all shape, sizes and colors. That is something the leagues love to tell me. What I’ve notice they tend to leave out is “ability”. I am not asking that they tell me, I ask that they show me.
In my dreams, I see a commercial for “Hockey Night In New England”.
It goes like this:
A family sits on a couch, the game is on but in the background, you hear sticky tires on a wooden floor, which is louder than the game that’s on TV.
Those tires are mine, they’re my wheelchair tires. Something that I do, that my family finds both charming and silly about me is that I “pace” when I watch hockey. Particularly playoff hockey. It’s why I have yet to comfortably watch hockey in a bar!
The only line of the commercial would be “everyone gets nervous on game days” shown in text as it pans to the person as they giggle, realizing what they are doing.
And that’s it.
That single commercial would change my life. The sport I love, fails to show me that I am here, and that they recognize me and all the humans around me.
I don’t even care if this falls into the lap of someone in advertising and the commercial on television is word-for-word what I just said, and I do not get credit for it. It’s not about “credit”. If I saw a commercial on local television or national television I would be simply speechless. I would honestly cry tears of joy, something that does not often happen for me in this sport.
Growing up, representations of disabilities in the media always seemed curious to me. Especially when I reflect on it like days like today. You do not know how amazing it is to feel seen and heard in the community that you love so much until you are. For me, it has yet to happen. Realistically, I hope that we can make changes before we make commercials.
Social media is an incredible tool. Twitter in particular is an amazing platform that reaches so many. It has given me friends, colleagues and a home here at PUCKerUp. With such an incredible tool I’ve made a new friend, one who brought up an amazing question.
Why can’t we have and use more accessibility tools? In this context, within sports media.
One of those being, closed captions. Sometimes they are provided for the audience when an athlete might have an awesome Swedish accent. One that might be hard to distinguish for a North American audience.
However, for many communities, Closed Captions are essential. It would be amazing to see the NHL and other leagues not assume that all of their audiences have perfect hearing. As a hearing person, whenever my favorite team releases a “hype video” it often comes with an epic narrator along with amazing photos and nostalgic clips. What it comes without is Closed Captioning.
I think my friends, who are also fans, deserve to enjoy amazing content like that too. In my most realistic opinion, this seems like a feasible “ask”. Another example would be for pre and post game interviews. Many of these are currently occurring over zoom. While there is a level of disconnect, since those reflect our times, it would still make a difference for many fans to be able to physically see what was being said.
So far my dreams are: commercials and closed captions. I know someone out there will find this annoying or outlandish. For the other people who are listening and reading, I am here and I am asking you to see me, and show me that you know I am here.
There are a lot of “me’s” and “I’s” in this piece but I hope that you can tell it’s not about me. It’s about another little kid out there, who’s using a mobility device and is still playing mini sticks in their accessible basement with their siblings.
We’ve been left behind before, please don’t forget us again.
