Eight-year-old Elena Bostic wanted nothing more in the world than to see Hoppers, the latest Pixar movie, in movie theaters.
As the March 6 debut date grew closer, Elena’s excitement to see the humorous, animated film about a robotic beaver grew.
“She was trying to watch it two months before it even came out, and when it came out, she begged, she made the plans for us to go see it,” her mother, Caitlin Bostic, recalled.
But Elena Bostic and her 8-year-old friend Mia Gearheart are deaf, so when the two settled into their movie theater seats with their popcorn in hand, they did so with glasses that display captions throughout the movie.
Those glasses are one of the possible accommodations for the deaf and hard of hearing at movie theaters mandated since 2018 by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The other is a device that fits into cup holders and displays captions.
The glasses were too big for Elena and Mia, so Mia, who has cochlear implants that allow her to hear relatively well, quickly removed her glasses to watch the film. Elena, however, does not have the implants — and when the glasses died, she was lost for the first five or 10 minutes of the movie. Her father went to the counter to get fully charged glasses.
“What did they just say?” Elena repeatedly asked her mother watching the movie beside her.
“She might as well be watching a silent movie,” Cailtin said, speaking of the malfunctioning equipment.
But there’s a simple fix — theaters could put the captions on the screen. And for nearly a decade, the West Virginia Association of the Deaf has lobbied the state Legislature to pass a bill that would require limited showings — typically one or two a week — for new movies in what’s called open captions, where the words are burned into the print of the film.
John Burdette, the legislative chair for the West Virginia Association of the Deaf, said his organization began pushing for the legislation in 2018, after Hawaii passed a similar law. Like the girls, he too has run into issues with technology dying in the middle of a showing, or being unable to use a cupholder.
“I basically stopped going to movie theaters,” he said.
Since 2018, lawmakers from both parties have introduced open captioning bills, but it wasn’t until 2025 that they brought the bill to the floor of the House of Delegates. That year, the House voted overwhelmingly for the bill, but the Senate chose not to take it up.
This year, the bill, sponsored by Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, came even closer to passing. But maneuvering in the Senate watered down and ultimately killed the bill.
Deeds’ bill mandated that movie theaters with six or more screens would hold two open caption showings a week for each film running. The bill passed the Senate Committee for Government Organization with little debate.
However, when the bill arrived in the judiciary committee, some senators voiced concerns that mandating movie theaters to run open caption movies would be bad for business, despite the theater owners’ lobbying group neither supporting nor opposing the issue.
Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said putting a mandate on movie theaters flies in the face of Republican efforts to deregulate the state’s economy.
“What this does is takes an industry that’s already struggling and adds regulations and adds expense for something that is producing less revenue,” he said. “Otherwise, they’d already be doing it. The people who own and operate movie theaters may be taking a neutral stance on this bill, but I guarantee you they’d be doing it right now because they’ve lost so much.”
Despite the objections, the bill narrowly passed 7-5, after a vote through a show of hands.
Two days later, when the bill arrived on the floor, Senate Majority Leader Patrick Martin, R-Lewis, called for it to be sent to the Rules Committee. That committee, consisting of Senate leadership, determines what the whole chamber votes on. And sometimes, they change a bill before it goes to a vote.
There it languished for almost a week. Members of the West Virginia Association of the Deaf staged protests in the Capitol rotunda, marching with signs demanding that senators pass the bill. Hal Suddreth, president of the association, said lawmakers showed their true colors when that happened.
“In this discussion about accessibility, it became more about business than about civil rights,” he said.
Senators in the rules committee changed the bill to make showing open captions optional, which is an option movie theaters already had.
Senate President Randy Smith, R-Preston, presides over the Rules Committee. He did not return requests for comment as to why his committee watered down the bill.
After a 33-1 vote, the bill went to the House, where delegates rewrote it to make the showings mandatory. That version passed by wide margins, but Martin recommended that the Senate not agree with the change. Martin did not reply to a request for comment.
As the bill passed back and forth between legislative chambers, time ran out and the session ended with no legislation to get regular showings of movies with captions.
Deeds, who is running for reelection, said he intends on running the bill next year if he comes back to Charleston.
“We need to get this right, and we really need to get it to where we take care of all of our citizens, especially those that are hearing impaired,” he said.
Without a state law, there’s nothing forcing movie theaters to offer open caption showings. Many already do, although the offerings can be sporadic and poorly advertised, Burdette said.
In 2023, Burdette said he attended a showing of Jesus Revolution at a theater in Beckley, which offered open captions.
“It was an amazing experience to be able to just sit back and watch a movie,” he said. “There was no strain on my neck, there was no eye strain. I was able to watch the movie, watch the film, and just enjoy it.”
But for Elena Bostic, the 8-year-old girl who wanted to watch an animated movie with her friend, the lack of captions shuts her out of the movies.
Caitlin, her mother, said failing to pass an open caption bill says something to her daughter.
“I just feel like my daughter is getting this message that she’s not important.”
If you or a loved one are deaf or hard of hearing, movie theaters are required to provide an assistive device, such as glasses, for all movie showings. Call ahead to find out the process from your local movie theater to acquire those.
