The director's comments address the issue of subtitles here. It seems that he was working on the assumption that the majority of the viewers would be hearing. Given that one of the producers was also deaf, I'm surprised that this issue wasn't addressed in some fashion , even by at least having the option on the DVD to have subtitles.

One thing I realized however is that subtitles aren't necessarily a primary means of communication for those who use ASL. It would be quite strange I imagine for someone who uses ASL to see the subtitles translating the signs on screen. So perhaps these issues also came into play for this issue.

Reading some of the viewer reaction on the show's forums was quite interesting as well. It seems like the dialogue and overall debate is skewed by the fact that the hearing community has trouble viewing deafness as anything other than a disability, and the deaf community identifies it as a culture. Most of the time they're just talking past each other because of this.

One thing I find problematic is the analogy often used that if a treatment comparable to the Cochlear Implant was available for blindness, or for correcting a mobility or musculoskeletal problem, that everyone would accept that no questions asked.

I can certainly understand the desire to provide as much mobility, or sensory input as possible to allow for maximum independence, the analogy misses the point that cultural identity is primarily transported through language.

With some allowance for the idiom-based languages such as some East Asian languages, written language is usually a phonetic representation of the oral language. Hence, without access to the spoken language, the deaf community really had to create in essence its own cultural identity around a new language, not in the least as a reaction to the stigma and discrimination received from the hearing community.

I think that one fundamental misconception that the hearing community has is that ASL is just a visual form of English. I didn't realize the distinction myself before reading some of the links and info found on the film's website. It's a similar error to thinking of Chinese characters as written phonetic representations.
I had originally thought you could simply use written English vocabulary and grammar to correspond to a signed construction.

So... my point is that while sign language(SL)is a tool used to accommodate for deafness, in a similar way Braille is used for blindness, there is the fundamental difference that (SL) is also used to create cultural identity via language and is the primary means of communication. Blind people are still able to communicate via speech and hence partake in that cultural identity.

Once the hearing community becomes more sensitive to this distinction, then I think there will be less stigma attached to deafness and the deaf culture. Currently the hearing community typically associates the cultural identity of deafness with the disability and so usually doesn't see its value in the face of restoring a sense.

I think the Cochlear Implant would become less controversial when:
1)Hearing community better understands distinction between ASL and English.
2)Society recognizes ASL and resulting culture as legitimate cultural entity.
3)Greater societal tolerance/adaptation for people of differing physical and mental/psychological condition.

I think the deaf community has had to take a defensive position against CI because of the above conditions not being met, and so are forced to use the debate on CI as a proxy for these larger issues.

there were a couple of odd cinematographic choices in the movie:

• all of the signed conversations in the movie were overdubbed by professional voice actors.

• the DVD didn't have any subtitles available

it just seems like an odd set of decisions for a movie as fundamentally concerned with accessiblity and questions of communication as this one.