Super Bowl telecast is criticized for not showing ASL performances

The Super Bowl may be over, but there is still a controversy over something that was not seen in Sunday’s telecast.

It has to do with the signing done by deaf performers.

CBS and the NFL are being called out on social media and elsewhere for not showing the American Sign Language performances during the pregame show on Sunday including those for the National Anthem, America the Beautiful and Lift Every Voice and Sing.

The sign language interpreters were introduced, but on broadcast TV, CBS didn’t show them signing those songs while they were going on. One of those performances, the National Anthem, was signed by actor Daniel Durant, a graduate of RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

CBS did provide a web page with a livestream of the deaf performers.

Congressman Joe Morelle, (D-25), sent a letter to both CBS and the NFL calling them out for not showing the ASL interpreters.

“Briefly introducing sign language interpreters and then not showing them for the duration of the performance shows that the NFL and CBS are more interested in appearing to do the right thing than actually doing the right thing,” Morelle wrote in a letter to officials at the NFL and CBS.

Actor Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), that she was “shocked” at CBS for introducing deaf performers at the pregame activities and then “not showing even one second (or more) of their performance.”

At the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT in Rochester, President Gerry Buckley issued a statement saying that it was “disappointing to see the lack of accessibility of the ASL performances at the Super Bowl, and we hope that for next year at Super Bowl LIX the NFL and FOX will consider showing these talented performers along with their hearing counterparts.”

So far, there’s been no comment on the recent criticism from CBS and the NFL.

This story is reported from WXXI’s Inclusion Desk.