Mother Jones illustration; J. Scott Applewhite/AP, Julio Cortez/AP
On September 10, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will debate each other for the first time. Amid weeks of contention over the debate’s rules, it has been reported that ABC News, the host network, informed both candidates’ camps that their microphones will be muted when the other is speaking. While Trump’s campaign has agreed to the terms, Harris’ camp reportedly has not.
Both Harris and Trump (though not his team, as my colleague Julianne McShane has written) want to have unmuted mics. But ABC’s rules are not unprecedented—Trump and President Biden’s debate this summer also featured muted mics.
Harris and her team’s argument for unmuted mics seems to rely on letting Trump embarrass himself: Speaking over a debate opponent when it is the other person’s turn to talk does not exactly look professional. But there is a more serious reason for Harris to reconsider her stance: ensuring that one person talks at a time will make the event more accessible to some disabled viewers.
For people who need live captioning during the debate, constant changes in speakers are challenging to follow. In the UK, the BBC uses different colors to indicate different speakers when multiple people are talking—but US news networks have yet to catch up. It is also considered best practice for American Sign Language interpretation to only let one person speak at a time, which makes interpreters’ jobs more practical.
More than 48 million Americans are hard-of-hearing, 11 million of whom are Deaf or have significant loss—not a small number of potential viewers. Captions can also be helpful for people with other disabilities, including conditions that affect cognition such as ADHD and Long Covid.
Political debates can be informative—or just entertaining, if your mind is already made up. If Harris wants an easy win for disability rights, she doesn’t need to hold out on this rule.
