Tavis Smiley interview
Via an ASL interpreter, Matlin discusses her career and role in the series, Switched at Birth, in this interview for PBS.
I grew up watching television with my family, not understanding what was going on, not understanding what was being said, and my parents and my brothers would laugh at certain things that were being said or they would watch, watching a cop show, and I would have to ask someone to interpret for me. So when Closed Captioning came along, just the beginnings of it, before it became law for all networks to have to closed caption, I just had to sort of make up lines with what people were saying, whatever they were saying on television.