"GMTV Discussion on Blogging"
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"I would have enjoyed watching it except I had to keep my hand over the lower right hand of the screen to mask that awful little man doing signing, which dominated the entire screen. It would give you a migraine having those bouncing hands waving around out of the corner of your eye for half an hour".

"Are there really that many deaf people in Britain who cannot hear even with the aid of a hearing aid that they would discomfit millions to cater to them? I don't believe it".

"That little man in the corner was a nightmare".

"This PC signing is becoming a serious menace, eg on News 24 and elsewhere. Can't there be a switch to block it? Why do we all have to involuntarily suffer this imposition? It made me lose concentration on the discussion. Incidentally if the signing was as wildly out of synch as the sound (on my system at least) there must be be a lot of very confused deaf lipreaders out there!"

"GMTV are forced by Ofcom to have 60 hours of deaf signing per annum. So they choose to do it all on their political programme between 6 an 7am on a Sunday!"

"What's wrong with subtitles?"

"Re that signing, all that waving around going on just out of the corner of your eye cannot be good for epileptics or people, like me, who get migraines which always begin with flashing lights. What a nightmare! It's a horrible distraction. I couldn't concentrate on what was being said until I covered up the lower right of the screen with my hand - not a comfortable position in which to watch an interesting show."

"Why is other people's disability being forced on the vast normal majority? There should be a special button for deaf people to click to get the service. If I weren't such a follower of this blog, I would have clicked the video off after about 90 seconds into the discussion".

"I admit that Mr Sign was most annoying, but I have found an amusing diversion: Much in the way that Saturday children's tv once redubbed that French adventure series 'Flashing Blade', I turn off the sound (second time around) and make up a whole new interview based solely on Mr Sign's gestures and facial expressions. Sad I know, but it can be amusing and it confuses the hell out of my dogs when I fall off my chair laughing".

"Oh well, let's just exclude disabled people because some people find making programmes accessible annoying. Can't be as annoying as a TV operator excluding you from the majority of their output".

"I had to turn over to the other side because of the signing and when I switched back I had missed it. Bummer!"

"Louise, is that how you justify annoying everyone on behalf of the disabled? Just to spread the inconvenience around equally? in effect to impose disability on everyone, to say "we've got problems so why shouldn't you?" Seems like a sad, introverted, counter-productive strategy, and blocks communication."

"If the signer bothers you just open up another tab and browse around the page or the net whilst the interview plays in the background on the first page."

"The technology exists to have the signing as an overlay that could be turned on or off.. but the broadcasters have dragged their feet over implementing it, and the regulator let it slip. It'll probably never happen now, as far as I know.."

"Sigh .... how sad it is that people have a problem with signing on TV, what little of it there is. Realtime subtitling isn't particually easy. I've find it much less intrusive than the ridiculous news tickers than most new organisations now add. Get a life folks and stop wishing others were harder than they are already."

"Re the little man signing his brains out, I cannot get over this impertinence. You are paying a licence fee to have someone else's disability not only thrust down your throat, but distracting your from your own viewing (for which you pay) and possibly causing distress. That constant, rhythmic movement just out of direct vision, when one's eyes are on the main focus of the TV screen and attendant movement, must have caused some people to experience episodes of epilepsy. I get a migraine about twice a year - hardly a major sufferer - but it is this kind of rhythmic flickering that brings it on. I think this is absolutely outrageous. What's wrong with a Click-On facility added to TVs for truly deaf people? This is all part of the Socialist programme of diminishing everyone and flattening them all out. As an ancillary point, I do not, as I said above, believe there are so many completely deaf people in Britain who can't hear even with a strong, modern, specially-fitted hearing aid, to justify that vile government imposition on the healthy. (Not that forcing other people's disabilities on healthy people would ever be ethical.) This is one more step in state control."

"I found resizing the window and moving the slider bars around did the trick."

"Curiously, I started watching GMTV at 6am and I didn't see the guy on acid breakdancing in the corner, or whatever the bloody hell he was doing. Sign language? Yeah right. More like he'd spent all night clubbing and was still going at 6 in the morning..."

"I seem to remember that in the heady early days of digital TV, one of the talking points was that one could broadcast the "sign man" alongside the normal broadcast, and the viewer could configure his TV to show the signer or not, as he chose. That doesn't seem to have happened."

* [sarcasm] tags inserted in case someone is dumb enough to think I'm being serious.