Recently, the Department of Justice released the final rule requiring movie theaters to take the following action:
(1) Public accommodations that own, operate or lease movie theaters have and maintain the equipment necessary to provide closed movie captioning and audio description at a movie patron’s seat whenever showing a digital movie produced, distributed, or otherwise made available. (see §36.303(g)(2)-(6)). In other words, equipment must be available at all showings for the Deaf and Blind patrons of all movie theaters and that they must have a minimum number of fully operational captioning devices and to provide them to patrons upon request.
(2) Public accommodations that own, operate or lease movie theaters must provide notice to the public about the availability of these features to their Deaf and Blind customers. (see § 36.303(g)(8)).
(3) Public accommodations that own, operate or lease movie theaters must ensure that theater staff is available to assist patrons with the equipment before, during, and after the showing of a movie with these features. (see §36.303(g)(9)). This means that movie theaters must have staff available who are able to operate and respond to problems with all equipment necessary to deliver captioning and audio description and to show patrons how to use the individual devices whenever digital movies with such features are shown.
As an attorney and advocate for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community as well as the former Chairman of Loop Utah, this is excellent news. It has always been a challenge for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community to enjoy films at the local movie theater. This new rule creates a nationwide standard that will be followed throughout the United States.
Title III of the ADA requires public accommodations to furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services and to ensure effective communication with people with disabilities. The DOJ considers captioning and audio description devices to be auxiliary aids under the ADA.
The purpose behind the release of this new regulation is that even though many movie houses worked hard to make their theaters accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing as well as to the Blind, the DOJ was still receiving complaints that neither closed movie captioning nor audio description is universally available at movie theaters across the United States. Even when they do provide it, the devices may not be kept in good shape as to be readily available upon request.
This new rule applies only to certain movie theaters as defined by the rule. The rule defines a movie theater as a “facility, other than a drive-in theater, that is owned, leased by, leased to, or operated by a public accommodation and that contains one or more auditoriums that are used primarily for the purpose of showing movies to the public for a fee.”
This new regulation will not apply to any movie theater that shows only analog movies in all of its auditoriums nor will it apply to drive-in theaters because the technology to provide closed movie captioning and audio description in such venues allegedly does not yet exist.
It is worth noting that under this new DOJ rule, it allows movie theaters to provide open captioning (i.e., captioning that is shown on the screen and visible to all movie patrons) but it does not require movie theaters to provide open captioning under any circumstances. Unfortunately, Hearing Loops were not mandated under these new regulations.
Currently, there are four different closed caption technologies for digital cinema systems available on the commercial market. Those technologies are the Rear Window® system; the CaptiView™ system by Doremi Cinema, LLC; Ultra Stereo Labs (USL), Inc.’s closed caption infrared system; and Sony’s Entertainment Access Glasses and Audio Description receivers.
A movie theater must provide a minimum number of fully operational captioning devices in accordance with the following table.
A movie theater must provide a minimum number of fully operational audio description devices in accordance with the following table.
Naturally, movie theaters do not have to comply with the new rule’s requirements if compliance would result in an undue burden or a fundamental alteration.
The DOJ intends to publish the final rule in the Federal Register in the near future, and the rule will take effect 45 days after publication.
