Big Brother has its first ever deaf contestant, Matt Klotz, this season — and this week’s audio-based Veto competition left some viewers wondering whether the challenge was fair to him.
Matt, 27, who holds a world record in swimming for deaf athletes, was one of six players who competed in the Veto challenge during the Wednesday, August 16, episode of the CBS reality series.
During the competition, titled “Twisted Tasks,” contestants had to put on headphones and listen to three different records, each of which played an audio clue. The houseguests then had to put the clues together and perform a corresponding task.
Matt went into the competition determined to win in order to protect his ally Reilly Smedley from eviction, but Head of Household Hisam Goueli ultimately finished all three tasks in the shortest amount of time.
After seeing the nature of the competition, some Big Brother fans took to social media to speculate that it put Matt at a disadvantage. “If you cast someone who is deaf you need to make competitions that are fair for them. there’s no reason matt should be at a disadvantage for something he can’t control #bb25,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another chimed in: “Big Brother can’t be serious having a VETO competition solely based off piecing together different sounds while Matt is deaf?? Talk about a huge disadvantage? #BB25.”
Despite the backlash, Us Weekly can confirm that a hearing impaired game tester has been conducting trial runs of all the games this season. Other amendments have also been made to competitions, including the addition of light elements and providing Matt with special noise canceling headphones that enable him to hone in on vital information by removing unnecessary sounds.
In another challenge from this season — last week’s Head of Household competition — houseguests seemingly had to rely on audio clues from the “Nether Gorgon” in order to figure out where to safely hide from his wrath. However, Us can confirm that a voice to text system was used, so Matt was able to read the clues from a screen.
The network also noted that production consulted with Matt’s audiologist specialist and coordinated with production audio specialist David Crivelli prior to the start of the season in an effort to maximize Matt’s performance on the show.
Crivelli and Big Brother executive producer Allison Grodner spoke to Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, August 16, shedding more light on how they prepared for Matt’s participation in the Twisted Tasks competition.
“Without knowing the competition at all, we had him test out a series of voices so that we knew it was a voice that he would be able to identify and hear in this competition,” Grodner told the outlet.
Crivelli added that they then had Matt identify the voice that worked best for him. “The frequency of the voices was determined based on his strength of what he could hear. And that same tone and voice went to everybody,” he explained.
Big Brother airs on CBS Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
