Chris Pratt apologizes to hearing-impaired people in ASL, because that’s what he does

Chris Pratt’s learned a lesson that many of us end up learning one day, one way or another. Because a lot of people are on the internet, it means individuals of many different and varying backgrounds are represented, and it may happen that you could step on their toes inadvertently. They’re not being oversensitive—they’re just making their voice heard, and Chris learned this the hard way.

After Chris posted a video on Instagram where he told people to turn up the volumein order to watch it properly (because scrolling past a video on the app doesn’t play its sound) people criticized him for being a little insensitive to those with hearing impairment.

Now, any other personality might just double down and brush it off as haters hating and trolls trolling, but not Star-Lord. In true Good American Boy fashion, he responded with an apology that kept it 100:

Instagram does this thing where it mutes all the videos it shows and forces you to turn on the volume in order to hear them. (maybe because most people are watching those videos at work when they should be working and don’t want to get caught. I know that’s when I do it. ?) So when I made a video recently with subtitles, and requested that people turn up the volume and not just “read the subtitles” it was so people wouldn’t scroll past the video on mute, thus watching and digesting the information in the video. HOWEVER, I realize now doing so was incredibly insensitive to the many folks out there who depend on subtitles. More than 38 million Americans live with some sort of hearing disability. So I want to apologize. 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. Thanks for pointing this out to me. In the future I’ll try to be a little less ignorant about it. Now… I know some of you are going to say, “Hey! Chris only apologized because his publicist made him!” Well. That is not the case. 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. I hope you accept my apology. And on that note. Why doesn’t Instagram have some kind of technology to automatically add subtitles to its videos? Or at least the option. I did a little exploring and it seems lacking in that area. Shouldn’t there be an option for closed captioning or something? I’ve made them lord knows how much money with my videos and pictures. Essentially sharing myself for free. I know they profit. So… GET ON IT INSTAGRAM!!! Put closed captioning on your app. #CCinstaNow

A post shared by chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) on May 4, 2017 at 5:59am PDT

You saw that right: he apologized in American Sign Language. Now, some will argue that he didn’t need to go this far just to apologize, but the point is he saw it as a mistake he felt he needed to own up to, and as a chance for him to raise awareness for handicapped people. And to improve accessibility on Instagram—if Facebook can do it, why can’t IG?

Good job, Chris. Now if you could also just apologize for two-thirds of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 being such a total bore, we’d be even.

[People]