NEW YORK – A New York man is suing Pornhub’s parent company Mindgeek for allegedly failing to provide proper closed captions for deaf and hearing impaired pornography consumers.
Yaroslav Suris, who is deaf, says he was denied equal access to such titles as “Sexy Cop Gets Witness to Talk,” “Hot Step Aunt Babysits Disobedient Nephew” and other videos on Mindgeek sites Pornhub, Redtube and YouPorn, according to a court filing with the Eastern District of New York.
“Without closed captioning deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot enjoy video content on the Defendants (sic) Websites while the general public can,” the court document reads.
The Brooklyn man’s attorney noted in the filing that hearing impaired Pornhub viewers would also like to access premium and subscription content, but it wouldn’t be worth it without closed captioning.
“The Websites (sic) numerous videos which cannot be accessed by deaf and hard of hearing individuals are in violation of the ADA (American’s with Disabilities Act) and New York laws,” the court document reads. “Videos include most of the Websites (sic) videos in addition to the videos the Plaintiff tried to access mentioned herein.”
In a statement to TMZ Friday afternoon, Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said:
“We understand that Yaroslav Suris is suing Pornhub for claiming we’ve denied the deaf and hearing impaired access to our videos. While we do not generally comment on active lawsuits, we’d like to take this opportunity to point out that we do have a closed captions category.”
Suris seeks full compliance with the ADA and New York law, as well as unspecified damages.