In a time that is filled with negative news stories, rising illness numbers, and being confined to the house, no one knows how to make light of a situation quite like the generation of technology. We are known for making jokes in times of hardship because it is better (and easier) than being sad about situations we cannot control. In between streaming videos, taking up new hobbies, and completing online courses, people have taken to social media to share new renditions of viral memes relating to COVID-19 and being quarantined.

While working on the assignments for class this week regarding remix and remix culture, my mind kept going back to the memes I’ve been seeing on various social media platforms. Viral memes from the past few months have been recirculating after being remixed to fit the current Internet climate and they seem to be a hit.

Twitter has always been a hotspot for generational humor and this case provides no exceptions:

I have only shown a few examples here, but if you go to Twitter yourself and simply search “quarantine” in the search bar you will find thousands more. Even though everyone is living different lives during this hard and confusing time, people relating to the same memes tends to show that we aren’t that different.

Over the past week we have spent the class time discussing usability and access when it comes to websites. While it is important for every individual to have access to websites such as government, informational, or entertainment, I believe that access should extend outside of the internet.

A recent conversation on Twitter has brought to my attention that there is a large crowd that despises closed captions when watching TV or streaming services. As someone who has deaf family members and grew up with captions on all cartoons, this is frustrating to me. I have never been able to go to the movie theater with my aunt because she does not want to go to a movie she can’t read the dialogue; if the dialogue is not provided, she spends majority of the movie trying to piece together plot and characters rather than watching it for enjoyment.

I have compiled a few examples from my Twitter timeline of various users complaining about the use of closed captions:

While these are just a handful of the tweets made in the past few months, it is clear that some people have distinctive reasons for hating subtitles. I think it is interesting everyone likes to advocate for equality and accommodating disabilities, but when it comes to something they don’t personally like, it is no longer acceptable. If more people were accepting of subtitles, especially in a public setting, I might be able to see a movie with my aunt one day.

The idea of usability and access is not a new one and it is time that those who are often forgotten are recognized. If effort is put into making websites accessible, why are TV shows or movies any different?