I’m signing part of what I’m saying tonight because while we were making the movie, we all became more aware of the problems of the handicapped. Over 14 million people are deaf. They are the invisible handicapped, and can’t share this evening, so this is my way of acknowledging them.
A little more history…
Closed captioning was developed in 1979 (the National Captioning Institute was founded on January 30, 1979), and in 1982, they wanted a big event to debut live closed captioning. For the event they chose the 1982 Academy Awards—likely because of this acceptance speech. The company that did closed captioning was housed in Washington, D.C., so they sent someone to LA to oversee the live closed captioning. That employee was Marc Okrand. While working at the Oscars Okrand met someone who was working at Paramount on the new Star Trek movie. They needed help with the Vulcan, and Marc said he could help, as he had a Ph.D. in linguistics. They remembered him when they started working on the next Star Trek.
In other words, this acceptance speech is at least partially responsible for the creation of the Klingon language.
amhrancas 