"Please reconsider immediately - I and all of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in America need closed captioning - it's our window to the world!!"

Hell hath no fury, it seems, like the deaf and hard of hearing scorned.

Hundreds of angry, frustrated letters have streamed into the Federal Communications Commission's offices over the last month since the agency made it easier for non-profit broadcasters to opt out of closed captioning requirements.

"How can these orders be allowed to stand?" one complaint begins. "My husband's activities are SO limited because of his hearing and now you're saying it's OK to lessen the quality/quantity of it!!

"I'd love to see each and every one of you attempt to view T.V. for ONE day limited to the lousy captioning available! At least you're only allowing religion to be shut out, at this time...nothing important!"

This bitter sarcasm is directed at the FCC's recent Anglers for Christ Ministries ruling, which critics say created a whole new class of broadcasters exempt from the agency's closed captioning requirements.

In mid-September the Commission gave closed captioning exemptions to two religious broadcasters: "Anglers for Christ Ministries, Inc," and "New Beginnings Ministries." Both groups claimed that providing on-screen video text, which allows people with hearing disabilities to follow television programs, represented an excessive financial hardship.

The FCC granted the waivers, but went further, noting that in future cases if a non-profit demonstrates that it receives no compensation from video program distributors and that "in the absence of an exemption, may terminate or substantially curtail its programming," the FCC will expedite a closed captioning exemption request.

Since then disability rights groups have protested the ruling, warning that it will make it much easier for programmers to opt-out of closed-captioning, and charging that the FCC has already given hundreds of groups waivers without any real evidence that closed-captioning represents a barrier for them.

The FCC "departed from long practice and improperly established a new class of programming that is exempt from the closed captioning requirements without proper notice and comment," seven leading disability groups charged in a public filing dated October 12th. They want an emergency stay on the decision. Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts also filed a complaint on the matter with the FCC.

Now the letters are coming in.

"IT'S A MUST FOR ME AS I AM DEAF AND SO DOES ALL OF MY DEAF FRIENDS WHO DEPEND ON CC. WE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT. IT'S OUR PLEASURE TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SAYING AND ENJOYING THE TV SHOWS WITH CC," begins one protest from Simi Valley. "Why don't you plug your ears and watch TV so you can understand how we go through."

Some of these emails are obviously Web form letters that consumers can easily file from the National Association of the Deaf's Web site. But what is striking about many of them is that, unlike the homogenous missives most FCC letter writing campaigns churn out, the composers of these comments have taken pains to express their disappointment in their own words.

Many implore the Commission to imagine what it would be like to watch TV without hearing.

"I am a hearing impaired person and have been most of my life," confides another Californian. "I go from hearing aids to headsets to phones with great difficulty. I don't know if you yourself are hearing impaired or can related to the significance of sitting down to watch a TV program or movie after a hard day and not be able to hear the dialogue . . . "

In other instances the protests come from the partners and parents of deaf people. "I just heard about this new ruling and as the mother of a deaf child, I want to ask that you please reconsider this," writes a woman from Tennessee.

And still others warn the Commissioners not to mourn for whom the bell tolls.

"Do you know the statistics on your likelihood on you all eventually losing your own hearing?" asks a hearing impaired couple from Flower Mound, Texas. "This isn't just for people born deaf! Sleep and dream on that!"

Since the petition for an emergency stay on the decision, a few more requests for exemptions have come in, according to the public docket on the issue: one from "Think Drug Free America," which produces the "2 Blessed 2 Be Stressed TV Show" in Knoxville, Tennessee, the other from Upon This Rock International Ministries, a West Covina, California ministry which broadcasts a program called the "The Breath of God."

So far no non-profit or advocacy group has filed a statement with the FCC in defense of its new policy on closed-captioning waivers.

More stories:

• Disability rights groups ask FCC for emergency stay on closed captioning ruling
• "There's a failure of process here"—Karen Peltz Strauss on the closed-captioning controversy