The Spirit of Inclusion: Tell Qantas to Provide 100% Captioned Entertainment
The issue
My name is Christian (CJ). I am Deaf, an Auslan user, and a regular Qantas flyer.
In July, I boarded a long-haul Qantas flight to France to attend the Clin d'Oeil Festival- one of the world’s largest celebrations of Deaf arts and culture. Traveling for over 20 hours halfway across the globe should be an exciting journey. Instead, it was an exhausting reminder that Deaf passengers are still treated as an afterthought by Australia’s national carrier.
When you settle into a long-haul flight, inflight entertainment is an essential part of the journey. Yet on Qantas, deaf and hard-of-hearing passengers are locked out of the vast majority of it.
While hearing passengers enjoy hundreds of the latest movies, blockbusters, and television series, Deaf passengers are restricted to a tiny, outdated fraction of the library, relegated to a sub-menu buried deep within the system. The majority of content has no captions at all.
Equal fares should mean equal access.
I pay the exact same airfare as every other passenger sitting around me. Yet, my experience is fundamentally second-class.
Captions are not an impossible technical feat. They are standard, lightweight digital files that already exist for virtually every film and show licensed by Qantas. Loading them alongside the video is standard practice, and once they are added, that content is accessible forever.
When I submitted a formal complaint to Qantas detailing this barrier, their response was to offer me 30,000 Frequent Flyer points.
Handing out bonus points is nothing more than sweeping a systemic accessibility failure under the rug. Points do not make my next flight accessible. They do not give me or thousands of other deaf travelers equal dignity in the sky. Equal access is a fundamental right, not an issue you can buy off with loyalty points.
Qantas calls itself the "Spirit of Australia." True Australian spirit means leaving no one behind.
We are calling on Qantas leadership to commit to real, lasting accessibility by mandating 100% closed caption coverage across the entire fleet. This means fully captioning all existing movies, TV shows, and video programming in the current catalog, and making captions a mandatory, non-negotiable standard for all future content added to the system.
Please sign and share this petition to tell Qantas that Deaf travelers deserve equal access on every flight.
2,279
The issue
My name is Christian (CJ). I am Deaf, an Auslan user, and a regular Qantas flyer.
In July, I boarded a long-haul Qantas flight to France to attend the Clin d'Oeil Festival- one of the world’s largest celebrations of Deaf arts and culture. Traveling for over 20 hours halfway across the globe should be an exciting journey. Instead, it was an exhausting reminder that Deaf passengers are still treated as an afterthought by Australia’s national carrier.
When you settle into a long-haul flight, inflight entertainment is an essential part of the journey. Yet on Qantas, deaf and hard-of-hearing passengers are locked out of the vast majority of it.
While hearing passengers enjoy hundreds of the latest movies, blockbusters, and television series, Deaf passengers are restricted to a tiny, outdated fraction of the library, relegated to a sub-menu buried deep within the system. The majority of content has no captions at all.
Equal fares should mean equal access.
I pay the exact same airfare as every other passenger sitting around me. Yet, my experience is fundamentally second-class.
Captions are not an impossible technical feat. They are standard, lightweight digital files that already exist for virtually every film and show licensed by Qantas. Loading them alongside the video is standard practice, and once they are added, that content is accessible forever.
When I submitted a formal complaint to Qantas detailing this barrier, their response was to offer me 30,000 Frequent Flyer points.
Handing out bonus points is nothing more than sweeping a systemic accessibility failure under the rug. Points do not make my next flight accessible. They do not give me or thousands of other deaf travelers equal dignity in the sky. Equal access is a fundamental right, not an issue you can buy off with loyalty points.
Qantas calls itself the "Spirit of Australia." True Australian spirit means leaving no one behind.
We are calling on Qantas leadership to commit to real, lasting accessibility by mandating 100% closed caption coverage across the entire fleet. This means fully captioning all existing movies, TV shows, and video programming in the current catalog, and making captions a mandatory, non-negotiable standard for all future content added to the system.
Please sign and share this petition to tell Qantas that Deaf travelers deserve equal access on every flight.
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Petition created on 15 October 2026