Chris Pratt would like to be heard loud and clear: He’s sorry for offending people with hearing disabilities.
The “Guardians of the Galaxy” star Pratt took to Instagram on Thursday to issue a lengthy mea culpa, after realizing that he’d been “incredibly insensitive to the many folks out there who depend on subtitles.”
Pratt explained that he had recently posted a video with subtitles, “and requested that people turn up the volume and not just ‘read the subtitles.’” The actor said that he wrote the message “so people wouldn’t scroll past the video on mute, thus watching and digesting the information in the video.”
However, the actor continued, “I realize now doing so was incredibly insensitive to the many folks out there who depend on subtitles.”
The actor went on to note that he has hearing-impaired relatives.
“More than 38 million Americans live with some sort of hearing disability. So I want to apologize,” Pratt wrote. “I have people in my life who are hearing-impaired, and the last thing in the world I would want to do is offend them or anybody who suffers from hearing loss or any other disability. So truly from the bottom of my heart I apologize.”
Pratt went on to stress that his apology wasn’t prompted by his publicist, noting, “As always I control my social media. Nobody else. And I am doing this because I’m actually really sorry. Apologies are powerful. I don’t dole them out Willy-Nilly. This is one of those moments where I screwed up and here’s me begging your pardon.”
The actor went on to suggest that Instagram should adopt technology that would automatically add subtitles to its videos.
“GET ON IT, INSTAGRAM!!! Put closed captioning on your app,” Pratt wrote.
The actor included a video of himself using sign language to apologize.