It's important because millions of people are deaf or hard of hearing.  Not including subs denies each of the these people the opportunity to watch and/or purchase these blu-rays.  I don't wish to be stuck with a standard definition DVD of The Lady From Shanghai, for example, when a new 4K remastered blu-ray is available.  But I have to, because TCM failed to include the subtitle track that is ALREADY PRESENT on the decade-old DVD.  Not only that, they spent extra money to re-author the entire disc after a lackluster first pressing met with a negative critical response, yet still failed to fix the fact that they forgot to include an English subtitle track.  

Olive routinely fails to include subs on every release, denying many of us the opportunity to watch classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or High Noon.  I've sent several emails inquiring about this and failed to get any response.

Kino Lorber — in the past, at least — has failed to include subs on their English-language discs, and with their upcoming slate of classic catalog blu-rays, MANY great movies might soon be off-limits to any of us who require subs to be able to "hear" the movie. 

If a company decided to issue blu-rays that didn't include the audio track, people would be outraged.  Why?  Because no one would be able to folow the movie and understand what's going on, — and the studio would certainly declare it an mistake and most likely fix the problem.  But to the hard-of-hearing, subtitle tracks ARE the audio.  Withouth them, following the movie is not only difficult, it coudl very well be impossible.  It's like not including the audio track to everyone else.

The cost of a subtitle track in relation to the rest of the disc remastering/authoring/packaging is minimal at best, especially considering many of these films have subtitle tracks that pre-exist from the DVD days yet are still not included because of oversight by these studios/distributors.  In these cases, new tracks don't even need to be made, just the pre-existing ones ported over along with all the extras and everything else that was licensed.  I realize creating new tracks takes more money and effort, but I believe the cost would be rewarded with sales to people who might not be able to purchase the disc otherwise. If Mill Creek can indluce sub tracks AND still price their discs for under $10 MSRP, then I fail to see how larger companies who charge $20 or $30 per disc can use price as an excuse.

All the major studios thankfully include subs on their releases.  Even smaller companies like Twilight Time and Mill Creek have started including subs on many of their releases, and we thank them for that.  But with more and more major studios licensing catalog titles to other distributors, it's imperative that we get everyone on board, and make them realize that subtitles — for many of us — are just as important as video quality, audio quality, and even extra bonus features. 

We are not asking for much - just the equal opportunity to be able to watch and enjoy every film in our region the same as those without hearing impairments.