Oregon Lawsuit

Our thanks to Cheryl Heppner of NVRC and USA-L News for this information:

Deaf Oregonians File Lawsuit Against Movie Chains

According to an article in USA Today, eight deaf residents of Oregon filed a class action lawsuit in Portland on Feb. 3 against three of the largest movie theater chains in the U.S. over the lack of closed captioning. The technology the plaintiffs want the theaters to provide is Rear Window Captioning. Captioning is projected from the rear of the theater onto small acrylic screens positioned in the cupholder of the seat. The deaf or hard of hearing patron can see through the screen to view the movie while reading the captions that appear on the screen. This technology also provides blind patrons with descriptions of the movies via infrared headsets.

The lawsuit was filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The chains being sued include Regal Cinemas of Knoxville, TN, Century Theatres of San Rafael, CA, and Carmike Cinemas of Columbus, GA. Combined, the three chains operate more than 7,700 movie screens across the country. None of them offered any comments, since they had not yet seen the complaint.

A second article by Ashbel S. Green in The Oregonian on Feb. 4 says that the nation's largest chain, Cinemark, is likely to be added to the suit soon, according to Dennis Steinman, the Portland attorney who filed the suit in U.S. District Court. Steinman says Cinemark and the other three chains own 75 to 80 percent of all movie theaters in the U.S.

Rear Window Captioning, which costs about $12,000 per theater, is in use at about 48 theaters and in Disney theme parks nationally, according to Larry Goldberg, director of media access for the Boston public television station, WGBH, where the technology was developed in the early 1990s. General Cinemas is the only theater chain using the system at the moment.

Steinman said that the next step would be to try to get the case certified as a national class action to cover theaters throughout the nation.

He reported that the main issue in the case is likely to be whether the $12,000-per-theater price tag is too steep. The ADA requires that any accommodation for the disabled must be readily achievable and not cause undue financial or administrative burden or not fundamentally alter the nature of the service being provided, he said.

Why the Oregon Lawsuit is Dangerous
-- Cheryl Heppner, NVRC

Captioning in movie theaters is very important to the people on our email news service. I know this because you've sent me hundreds of letters and emails. You've called me. You've talked to me in person about it. For this reason, I have taken a very active role during the past few years in trying to advocate for all movies to be captioned at the time of release and for a way to have regular showings at your local movie theaters, with the ultimate goal of having the captions available at any time you want to see a movie. The Oregon lawsuit, and one that has been under development in the DC/Virginia area, could result in not having a choice of how we see captioned movies.

I've personally tried many of the systems to provide closed captioning to movies and found them fascinating but cumbersome. All the closed captioning systems require you to have special equipment to see captions on the screen. Open captioning, which is like foreign language subtitles but has added information about sounds as well as words, is actually printed on the film and requires no special equipment. With only a few exceptions, most of the people I have heard from dislike Rear Window Captioning, and some cannot use it at all. Among the complaints I have heard about Rear Window Captioning are:

- It requires you to pick up and return special equipment (the plexiglass/acrylic screen and stand)

- It can be difficult to adjust the screen and stand to catch the reflection of the captions AND be able to see the movie

- In some parts of the theater, you can't see the words on the acrylic screen easily because they are reflected at an angle

- Theatres which have Rear Window Captioning have only a small number of acrylic screens, so groups of deaf or hard of hearing people could not see movies together

- Theaters also ask that you come early to check out the screens; since it takes time to check them out and set them up, you can't just get there in time for the start of the movie

- Other moviegoers stare and ask questions about the screens, an intrusion that some people dislike

- Sometimes the color of the light used for the captions can cause them to disappear (e.g. if the LED display has red captions and someone in a red dress is onscreen; red captions on the red dress can't be seen)

- Wheelchair users often have fixed seating, and that area may make it impossible for them to use Rear Window Captioning

- Children and short people find it difficult and even impossible to adjust the screen to see both the captions and the movie

- People with vision problems, such as those who have bifocals and trifocals, report that it is difficult to use

- Many people find using Rear Window Captioning much more tiring on the eyes than reading open captions

In some situations, such as for IMAX theaters with their huge screens and entertainment venues like Disney World, Rear Window Captioning makes more sense because open captioning is not feasible or much more difficult to do effectively. But neighborhood movie theater personnel have said that they dislike Rear Window Captioning and prefer open captioning. They have a lot of staff turnover, making it hard to keep training new people on using the special equipment, helping the moviegoers check it out and set it up, and working to keep it maintained. It's also expensive, with installation costing $12,000 and an additional cost of each screen, while open captioned movies cost theaters nothing..

Lawyers at Cohen & Cohen, the DC firm which is working on a class action suit against movie theaters, have proceeded with caution, doing research and reaching out to the deaf and hard of hearing community in developing their case, which has not yet been filed. They are now aware that there is no complete agreement among consumers about what form of captioning they want in theaters, and they are aware that a lawsuit not carefully structured could get us something we don't want. A key lawyer involved in the case has a deaf mother.

Unfortunately, the Oregon class action suit would specifically require Rear Window Captioning. If it goes forward, and wins, it will set the precedent for similar lawsuits. The lawyer for the Oregon group has said that his next step would be to make this a national class action suit.

I talked yesterday with Jim House of TDI, Inc., who knows at least one of the people involved in the Oregon suit. He knows some people in Oregon and plans to talk with them.

Any class action lawsuit for movie theater access right now, whether or not it intends to require Rear Window Captioning, is still likely to end up doing just that. The Americans with Disability Act requires that an accommodation be "readily achievable." While Tripod Captioned Films, with support from consumers, has taken giant leaps in the past two years, open captioned films are still in short supply. At any given moment there may be 10-12 different open captioned movies being shown in U.S. theaters. But Tripod is still only getting a few prints of each movie that have to be shared by all the theaters in the U.S.