Movie Theater Accessibility

Captioning and Audio Description

Stadium Seating and Wheelchair Access

What follows is basic information to help movie theaters meet the rising demand for accessible services in their community and comply with ADA laws.  It also clarifies for persons with vision and hearing problems what services are technically available to them.

Captioning and Audio Description.

Many first-run movies are being produced today with open or closed captioning and descriptive narration.  Some of the movies include:  Leatherheads, Nim's Island, and the Harry Potter series.  (See the complete Coming Soon list.)  Yet most people with vision or hearing impairments cannot take advantage of this technology because most local movie theaters do not have the necessary equipment. 

Notes: 

• Essentially all accessible movies have captioning, but historically only 60% of accessible movies have audio description available.  Be sure to check the theater listing carefully for the "DVS" or "DA" indicator (meaning audio description).  Both the number of accessible films and percent of described movies are expected to rise.
• Regal offers open captioning, while White Oak and Beaver Creek have closed captioning, accessed via a chair-mounted screen which reflects captions from the rear wall of the theater via a system called RWC, or Rear Window Captioning.  The size of the captions increases the nearer to the rear wall you sit.
• For the Regal chain (which uses open captioning), not every showing activates the captions.  Check the schedule carefully!  However, the audio description IS available for all showings on that screen.  Read a user's personal experience with audio description at Regal North Hills.
• White Oak Cinemas is experimenting with running different shows on different nights during the first or last week of each month, giving patrons an opportunity to catch-up on shows they may have missed earlier.
• All of the theaters listed above offer Assistive Listening Devices for all of their screens.  This is unrelated to the accessibility features encoded with some movies.

Here are the statistics for the increasing number of accessible first run movies released each year in the USA:

Few of those AD tracks make it to DVD, as you can see in the last column of the table above -- order them here.  You can help by writing the studios and producers.

Background (Accessible Movies)

Sure, it costs the theaters money up front to install the equipment; but movie theater owners and operators can benefit in the long run from making their theaters more accessible by expanding their audience.  Often, however, they don't know where to start.

Movie accessibility for persons who are blind or have low vision, or who are deaf or hard of hearing is generally provided by a system called MoPix, which has two components:

• DVS Theatrical®, which provides descriptive narration to anyone wearing a special receiver and earpiece; and
• Rear Window Captioning® (RWC), which provides closed captioning not visible to audience members who don't need it.  (As of September 2007, 500 films had been captioned for RWS!)

There is an alternative system called DTS Access, which provides open captions plus audio description fully compatible with the MoPix system.

Here are several articles about MoPix and/or DTS Access installation experiences:

• New Technology Allows Hearing-Impaired Teens to Enjoy Movie Theaters (Massachusetts)
• Lights, Camera, Description! (from the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind)
• Studio Gives the Blind Audio-Enhanced TV (from Canada)
• Have You Read Any Good Movies Lately?  (from the Toronto Star)
• Roadmap to Movie Access -- One Advocate's Journey 

And Sony has even created a movie trailer with both audio description and captioning.

The cost per theater is roughly $16,000 for the entire MoPix system, including licensing fees.  Theaters are encouraged to install both components simultaneously in order to serve the largest possible audience.  There is no additional charge to the movie patron to use the service, and there is no extra charge to the theater operator for the captioned and described films.

Once theaters are ready for detailed information on equipment and costs, they can contact Susan Schneider, director of marketing for the Media Access Group, at 201-391-1610.  A hardcopy promotional brochure is available, as is a demonstration video.  (Arts Access can supply both.)

For more information, including a complete FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), visit the WGBH MoPix website at http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/.  You will also find instructions there on how to subscribe to the mailing list for accessible films.  If you want to contact major theater chains to let them know you would patronize them more if they installed this equipment locally, find their addresses at http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/chains.html.  If you wish to ask motion picture studios to describe or caption films or thank them for doing so, their addresses can be found at http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/studios.html.

Patrons who are hard of hearing and could benefit from an ALD may wish to check out our list of Triangle movie theaters with Assistive Listening Devices.  You may also wish to read how the United Kingdom is planning on equipping ten percent of their movie theaters with appropriate equipment for deaf and blind patrons in this December 2002 article entitled, Cinema Changes for Deaf and Blind.

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Stadium Seating and Wheelchair Access.

All movie theaters have some kind of accommodation for wheelchairs; however, the newer theaters with so-called stadium seating have been particularly problematic for persons in wheelchairs.  The US Department of Justice has sued at least five theater chains for not providing proper access.  (See the links below.)

Stadium seating generally involves a rear-entrance theater with a ramp behind a wall on each side coming down to the front, then stairs up the side to get to your seat.  In this configuration, wheelchair users are often "allocated" seats in one of the front rows and are forced to look up at the screen from the seats that are generally chosen last by most movie patrons.  This can be particularly difficult and painful for patrons with certain conditions requiring their use of a wheelchair.

Proper accommodation for persons in wheelchairs would require that theater owners provide wheelchair access to various levels (but not necessarily every row), affording the patron with a physical disability some of the same degree of choice in seating that a person who could walk normally would have.

Here are some links of interest addressing this topic.

• Accessible Stadium Guidelines, US Dept Of Justice, Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
• Key Features of Accessible Stadium Seating, summarized by Illinois Park Dept.
• Cinemark Settlement Regarding Stadium Seating, November 2004
• Oregon Cinema Chain Ruled in Violation of ADA for Front Row Wheelchair Seating, August 2003
• AMC's Stadium Seating Ruled Discriminatory under ADA, November 2002.
• United Artists Settlement with Dept of Justice, regarding stadium seating.
• Minnesota Law Regarding Wheelchair Seating, shown as an example of what one state is doing.

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