Movie Captioning Access Update

Deaf and hard-of-hearing people who have a hard time understanding dialogue at the movies benefit from closed captioning in a movie theater. Closed captioning technology for movie theaters allows hearing impaired patrons to read the movie dialogue as captions. The entire audience does not see the captions; only the patrons with the captioning device see the words. The reflectors are available at the theater's customer service desk. It can be very frustrating to miss that critical plot twist because you didn’t hear all of the words. How does the technology work? A captioning device displays reversed captions on an LED text display which is mounted in the rear of a theater. Deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons use transparent acrylic panels attached to their seats to reflect the captions so that they appear superimposed on the movie screen. The reflective panels are portable and adjustable, enabling the caption user to sit anywhere in the theater. Recently, there have been two major court rulings in movie captioning access. On April 30, 2010, a unanimous, three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires closed-captioning access in movie theaters. This is the second time a federal court has ruled that the ADA requires some captioning access (a federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled this way in 2004), and the first time that a federal court of appeals has ruled this way, overturning a lower court decision. Many theaters across the country already offer closed-captioning systems. In New Jersey in September 2004, the Attorney General’s Office and the Division on Civil Rights reached voluntary settlement agreements with four major multiplex theater chains operating in New Jersey regarding the installation of new deaf captioning technology. Under terms of the settlement agreements, American Multi Cinema (AMC), Loews Cineplex Theaters, Clearview Cinemas and National Amusements agreed to either equip their theaters with new captioning technology or, in multiplexes where the technology was already installed, to expand the number of screens offering such captioning. Please visit our website at http://www.coastalhearing.com/under helpful links to take the Better Hearing Institute hearing test. # # # Dr. Suzanne McCorry is Director of Audiology at Coastal Ear, Nose and Throat in Neptune, NJ and can be contacted at 732-280-7855; sbmccorry@coastalhearing.com; http://www.coastalhearing.com/