I'm writing this diary to explain to you what initially drew me to Barack Obama's campaign. It was a year ago, when I heard about Project Readon, a site that captions internet videos for free. I'm deaf, and the internet has left me behind when it comes to accessibility in internet media. I can't watch CNN videos, MSNBC videos, download media from network shows and movies onto my iPod or laptop that has captioning, and I didn't have that access until I found Project Readon.

And there was a video on that site. It was an outline of Barack Obama's plan to empower Americans with disabilities. Project Readon said that Barack Obama's campaign was the first website to sign up to caption their videos. Hillary Clinton's campaign was the second to join in along with Senator Tom Harkin's Senate campaign. The Republicans said no to Project Readon (with the exception of Ron Paul), which shows the lack of care that the Republican party has shown to Americans with disabilities.

Barack Obama provides that link to closed-captioned videos at Project Readon, which you can find here with the green button that says "Closed Captioning."

You click on that link, and you see a whole line of videos with closed captioning in them. That really meant a lot to me as a deaf American, who relies on captioning to get information about the outside world.

I also read Barack Obama's plan for Americans with disabilities. They also provided a link to sign up in a Disability Discussion group to talk about policies that can help disabled Americans. His efforts to expand the dialogue to deaf and hard-of-hearing people like me tells me what kind of a leader he'd be in this area.