Ruling expands captioning for hearing-impaired moviegoers

From: San Luis Obispo Tribune, CA - May 10, 2004

BY PAUL SINGER
Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" character sneered, "Go ahead - make my day," the line became such a cultural phenomenon that President Ronald Reagan repeated it in daring Congress to pass a tax increase he could veto.

But John Stanton and millions of other deaf Americans did not recognize the reference. The line comes from a 1983 movie that - like virtually all other American movies released since the end of the silent film era - had no subtitles or captions for the hearing-impaired.

Now a lawsuit filed by Stanton and two other deaf moviegoers against two major movie chains may change that, paving the way for a broad expansion of captioning devices for the hearing-impaired in theaters throughout the country.

In a settlement recently approved by a federal judge, the theater chains - AMC Theaters and Loews Cineplex - agreed to install individual captioning devices in a dozen theaters in the D.C. area over the next year. They also agreed to build the system into at least one screen in all their new theater complexes in the region.

"I'm probably going to be deaf for the rest of my life," said Stanton, a Washington attorney. "I hope I'm going to live to see the day where almost every movie is caption-accessible. ... I think our settlement is a very good starting point to get that process going."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler approved the settlement April 30. While it applies only to the Washington area, it "will set the standard for what other communities, at a very minimum, should be offering," she said.

The deal calls for use of Rear Window captioning technology, designed to help hearing-impaired moviegoers without blocking others' view, that provides the user a small plastic panel attached to a seat's cup holder. The captions are displayed on the back wall of the theater, and the reflection is visible on the panel but invisible to patrons in adjoining seats.

The technology currently is available in only one movie theater in the Washington area and fewer than 100 nationwide.

An AMC spokesman said that in addition to the Washington-area court settlement, the chain has made a voluntary commitment to install Rear Window in all its new theater complexes - but not for every screen. AMC also will retrofit at least one theater in all 210 of its complexes nationwide to provide captioning technology.

Loews declined to comment on its plans.

Stanton's lawsuit argued that theaters without captions violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to establish reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.

Two other lawsuits seeking to force theaters to install captioning technology - one in Oregon, one in Texas - have failed, leaving the D.C. settlement as the first lawsuit to result in an agreement to add captioning.

"What the settlement does is provide a model that can be replicated in other communities around the country," said Todd Houston, executive director of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

David Monroe, the attorney who negotiated the settlement on behalf of AMC and Loews, said even more captioning devices may be installed nationwide if it makes economic sense.

"If it turns out that a lot of additional people come to see captioned films, that makes it more likely that they will make more captioned films available," Monroe said.

But some advocates for the deaf are disappointed that the settlement does not go further.

"It's a drop in the bucket," said Cheryl Heppner, chairwoman of the Coalition for Movie Captioning, an alliance of advocacy groups for the deaf and hard of hearing. The coalition says the deal only requires "the ability to show captioned movies on roughly 5 percent of AMC/Loews screens forever."

Other advocates say the Rear Window system is cumbersome and that a better approach would be "open captions" - subtitles projected on the screen and visible to all patrons.

Studio and theater executives adamantly oppose that idea, saying such subtitles would be a distraction to their hearing clientele and would interfere with a director's creative control of the image on the screen.

Richard King, a spokesman for AMC Theaters, said his company has tested open captioning and "we have found that is something that is not appealing to moviegoers that are not hearing-impaired."

It is an open question whether there is an economic incentive for theaters to install captioning devices.

The Rear Window systems cost around $10,000 to install, and King pointed out that there are no data to prove that the technology brings in flocks of deaf or hard-of-hearing patrons.

Tawny Holmes, student body president at Gallaudet University, a D.C. school for hearing-impaired students, said deaf students looking for evening activities do not immediately think of going to the movies, mostly because they don't expect to find a captioned film.

"But when there is an announcement that there is going to be a captioned movie, they go in droves," she said, speaking through a sign-language interpreter.

Studios generally produce captions for the DVD or video versions of their films, and they already produce captions for some theatrical releases at minimal cost - about $50,000 per movie, said an executive at a major Hollywood movie studio who asked that his name not be used because of potential litigation. "The cost is the same whether it's in 12 theaters or 1,200," he added.

But the executive noted that the same is not true for theater owners, for whom the $10,000 cost per auditorium makes it prohibitively expensive to install the system in all 36,000 screens across the country.

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., introduced legislation last Wednesday that would create $310 million in tax breaks to help theaters offset the cost of installing captioning technology.

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