Signup Media

Deaf viewers install SignUp's Chrome extension so they can watch Disney+ or Netflix in ASL, BSL, or ISL when captions alone do not carry the whole performance.

ENABLE Model location

• Navigator-side Compensations → Augment with Third-Party Tools
• Navigator-side Compensations → Endure Inaccessibility

What it is

Mariella Satow started building SignUp in 2020 after searching streaming platforms for sign language content and finding almost none, and by 2021 her browser extension overlaid American Sign Language interpreter video on a small set of Disney+ titles including Moana, Zootopia, and The Incredibles.¹² SignUp now operates as a third-party tool that Deaf viewers install themselves to compensate when streaming platforms ship English captions and no signed track, and the tool routes interpretation in ASL, BSL, and ISL over video on Disney+ and Netflix.³⁴

Satow recruited roughly 200 volunteer interpreters across the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia, and the Alliance for Access reports that the library had grown to more than 125 interpreted films by July 2024, with most titles drawn from children's catalogs.⁴⁵ The Chrome Web Store listing presents the extension as free, names info@signupmedia.com as the support channel, and invites users to request titles or report problems when interpretation breaks on a platform update.³

Why it matters

The US Congress wrote captions into federal video law before streaming existed in its current form, and the 2010 Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act extended caption obligations from television to internet-delivered programming without adding a parallel sign language requirement.⁶⁷ The FCC's 2012 implementing order required distributors to caption full-length programming that had previously been captioned on TV, which set captions as the legal floor for streaming access and left signed interpretation outside the rule entirely.⁷ SignUp enters that regulatory history more than a decade later, at the moment when Disney+ and Netflix had already satisfied federal obligations through captions and treated signed access as optional. Satow, a hearing teenager learning ASL, built the extension because the platforms themselves did not.¹²

Schools, broadcasters, and compliance teams continue to train Deaf access as caption access, and the National Association of the Deaf documents that only a minority of deaf children grow up with regular signed language at home, which leaves many signing viewers to endure inaccessibility or install extensions when a platform treats ASL as out of scope.⁸⁹ Viewers who use sign language as their first language reach SignUp after a system of professional norms has already decided that text is enough, even though Department of Justice effective-communication guidance under the Americans with Disabilities Act instructs covered entities to consider each person's normal method of communication rather than defaulting to captions alone.¹⁰

Major streaming platforms treat caption quotas as the cost ceiling for Deaf access because federal rules fund no other floor, and SignUp redistributes the remaining labor onto a teenage founder, volunteer interpreters working across four countries, and users who reload the page when the browser overlay drifts out of sync.²⁴ The cost structure here is not neutral. Disney and Netflix paid for captioning pipelines already built into their production workflow, while SignUp's 200 interpreters shoulder the translation work the platforms decline to budget for, and viewers who want a title that has not been interpreted yet must send a request and wait.⁴⁵ The extension patches the gap without altering the incentive that produced it, because the FCC has not required streamers to develop native signed tracks and the streamers have not chosen to provision the interpretation budget, studio time, or in-house ASL producers on their own.

H-Dirksen Bauman and Joseph Murray argue in Deaf Gain that Deaf people generate distinct visual, spatial, and linguistic capacities through sign language rather than merely lacking a hearing norm, and Harlan Lane's When the Mind Hears documents how the Milan Congress of 1880 and the oralist schooling that followed spent more than a century suppressing sign language in Deaf education in favor of speech and lip-reading.¹¹¹² Satow's extension delivers a signed performance tradition to children whose institutions have historically treated signing as secondary to text, and it does so through volunteer labor that sits outside the caption industry's credentialing structure. The anthropological reading matters because it refuses the premise that captions are the neutral form of Deaf access. ASL, BSL, and ISL are first languages for many of SignUp's users, and a film delivered in a first language is not the same object as a film delivered in translated text.

Wyatte Hall, Leonard Levin, and Melissa Anderson argue in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology that language deprivation during the first five years of life produces lasting neurodevelopmental harm in deaf children, including disrupted working memory, executive function, and fund of knowledge, and the harm falls most heavily on the roughly 92% of deaf children born to hearing parents who do not provide regular signed input at home.¹³ Corina Goodwin and coauthors add that parent-reported executive function in deaf and hard-of-hearing children tracks with language access rather than auditory access, which means the developmental cost is produced by the absence of a usable language, not by deafness itself.¹⁴ Children who sit in front of Disney+ without a signed track, whose families do not sign fluently, and whose reading lags behind the on-screen caption speed lose access to a medium that hearing children absorb as ambient language environment. The extension cannot repair early language deprivation, but it does reduce one of its ongoing daily surfaces, the exclusion from shared family media that NAD describes as the "dinner table syndrome" extended to screens.⁸¹³

SignUp moves the frontier from caption-only video toward signed video on a few hundred titles, which restores to signing families a kind of media access that major streamers have not offered on their own. The limit still sits with native platform support. Fewer than 200 titles carry interpretation on a catalog of tens of thousands, the extension depends on Chrome APIs that can change without warning, volunteer interpreters carry the translation load, and users still file title requests and wait. Congress has not updated the CVAA to cover signed interpretation on streaming, though Senator Markey and coauthors have introduced the Communications, Video, and Technology Accessibility Act to add that requirement, and until the regulatory floor moves, SignUp's advance rests on volunteer labor and platform tolerance rather than on any obligation streamers must meet.¹⁵

Real-world examples

In the news

New Google Chrome Extension SignUp Offers ASL Captions for Three Films on Disney Plus (August 2021)
-- Ethan Shanfeld, Variety

• Variety reports that Satow launched SignUp with ASL overlays on Moana, Zootopia, and The Incredibles, and that she started the project as an ASL student who then recognized the gap for Deaf viewers. The piece documents SignUp entering a market where Disney+ already met federal caption rules but offered no signed track, which is the precise opening where a third-party tool takes over from builder workflow.¹

In the news

Teenage entrepreneur Mariella Satow tells us about SignUp (October 2022)
-- Mariella Satow, The Limping Chicken

• Satow tells the UK Deaf-led outlet that she searched streaming platforms for sign language content and "discovered there were none offered on any of the streaming platforms," and she frames the tool as a response to Deaf children who cannot read captions fast enough. The piece shows the extension emerging from a user problem rather than a broadcaster's access roadmap.²

In the news

A 17-year-old created a free app that makes Disney+ films more accessible for deaf children (November 2021)
-- Annie Reneau, Upworthy

• Upworthy quotes parent Karli H. saying of her deaf daughter "she's not reading yet, so captions don't mean anything. It was the first time she's had full access to a movie," which documents the specific case where a caption-only policy produces a child's exclusion from a medium her hearing peers access without effort. The parent's testimony locates the compensation labor at the family level when builders stop at text.¹⁵

• Alliance for Access reports that SignUp had interpreted more than 125 films in ASL, BSL, and ISL by July 2024, with children's content as the largest category, which matches Satow's stated prioritization of the audience that cannot yet read captions at video speed.⁴
• The Chrome Web Store listing names info@signupmedia.com as a direct support line and invites users to request titles or flag problems, which makes the extension also function as a user-facing give-feedback channel when platform updates break overlay sync.³
• Department of Justice ADA guidance on effective communication instructs covered entities to consider each person's normal method of communication, which means treating a signing Deaf viewer as automatically served by captions misreads the statute that builders often cite as their compliance target.¹⁰

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at the content and development stages means streaming platforms treating signed interpretation as part of the release package, not as an after-market accessory:

• "We are shipping ASL, BSL, and ISL tracks with the title instead of asking viewers to install an extension."
• "Our player renders the interpreter window natively so users do not need a browser workaround to watch in their first language."
• "We budgeted sign language interpretation into the release pipeline alongside captions and audio description."
• "We are prioritizing the children's catalog first, because that is where the language gap hurts most."

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect means treating caption coverage as complete Deaf access and moving on:

• "We already caption everything, so the Deaf audience is covered."
• "If someone needs sign language, they can find a plugin."
• "We will revisit signed tracks after the next content cycle."
• "Our compliance report says the platform meets the legal floor."
• "There is no FCC rule requiring us to ship ASL, so it does not make the roadmap."

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the work Deaf viewers and their families perform when streamers leave signed access out of the default stack:

• "I install the extension, reload the page, and hope the interpreter stays in sync with the film."
• "I check whether the specific movie my child wants has a signed version before I start it, because a caption-only title means she sits out."
• "I asked SignUp for a title six months ago and I am still waiting for a volunteer interpreter to finish it."
• "When Chrome updates break the overlay, I have to choose between waiting for a fix or skipping family movie night."
• "My daughter is not reading yet, so captions do not mean anything to her, and I rely on a free extension to give her a movie her hearing cousins watch without any effort."

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All observations occur within the context of English-language streaming video access in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia, where the FCC's CVAA rules set captioning as the legal floor and signed interpretation sits outside federal streaming obligations.

Footnotes

1. Shanfeld, Ethan. "New Google Chrome Extension SignUp Offers ASL Captions for Three Films on Disney Plus." Variety, August 29, 2021. https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/signup-asl-captions-disney-plus-1235051323/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Satow, Mariella. "Teenage entrepreneur Mariella Satow tells us about SignUp, sign language interpretation for Disney+ TV shows and movies!" The Limping Chicken, October 31, 2022. https://limpingchicken.com/2022/10/31/teenage-entrepreneur-mariella-satow-tells-us-about-signup-sign-language-interpretation-for-disney-tv-shows-and-movies/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. SignUp Media. "SignUp - Sign Language for Netflix & Disney+." Chrome Web Store. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/signup-sign-language-for/gbllbjbhbafgdcolenjhdoabdjjbjoom ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Alliance for Access. "#DidYouKnow: SignUp provides media accessibility for the signing Deaf community." July 15, 2024. https://allianceforaccess.org/resource/didyouknow-signup-provides-media-accessibility-signing-deaf-community ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. SignUp Media. "About SignUp." https://www.signupmedia.com/ ↩ ↩²

6. Federal Communications Commission. "21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)." https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/21st-century-communications-and-video-accessibility-act-cvaa ↩

7. Federal Communications Commission. "Closed Captioning of Video Programming Delivered Using Internet Protocol (IP)." https://www.fcc.gov/general/closed-captioning-video-programming-delivered-using-internet-protocol-ip ↩ ↩²

8. National Association of the Deaf. "Implications of Language Deprivation for Young Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, and Hard of Hearing Children." https://www.nad.org/implications-of-language-deprivation-for-young-deaf-deafblind-deafdisabled-and-hard-of-hearing-children/ ↩ ↩²

9. Andrew, Kathy N., Jennifer Hoshooley, and Marc F. Joanisse. "Sign Language Ability in Young Deaf Signers Predicts Comprehension of Written Sentences in English." PLoS One, 2014. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3938551/ ↩

10. U.S. Department of Justice. "ADA Requirements: Effective Communication." https://www.ada.gov/resources/effective-communication/ ↩ ↩²

11. Bauman, H-Dirksen L., and Joseph J. Murray, eds. Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. ↩

12. Lane, Harlan. When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf. New York: Random House, 1984. ↩

13. Hall, Wyatte C., Leonard L. Levin, and Melissa L. Anderson. "Language Deprivation Syndrome: A Possible Neurodevelopmental Disorder with Sociocultural Origins." Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 52, no. 6 (2017): 761-776. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5469702/ ↩ ↩²

14. Goodwin, Corina, et al. "Language not auditory experience is related to parent-reported executive functioning in preschool-aged deaf and hard-of-hearing children." Child Development 93, no. 2 (2022). https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13677 ↩

15. Reneau, Annie. "A 17-year-old created a free app that makes Disney+ films more accessible for deaf children." Upworthy, November 5, 2021. https://www.upworthy.com/app-deaf-children-disney-movies/ ↩ ↩²