Wash-CAP sues to expand movie captioning
The Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) filed a lawsuit last week in Seattle against six owners of multi-plex theaters asking the theaters to show more captioned movies.
The 33-page complaint names as defendants three national theater chains -- AMC, Regal and Carmike -- two local multiplex owners -- Kirkland Cinemas and Lincoln Square cinemas -- and Landmark, a company that specializes in owning and operating historic theaters.
At present, both the AMC and Regal chains show some captioned movies, but relatively few. AMC shows first-run movies at seven different complexes with a total of 72 screens in King County, but has equipped only four of those screens to show captioned movies. Regal also has seven multiplex complexes in King County showing first-run movies on a total of 83 screens, but again, has equipped only four to show captioned movies. The other four defendants show no captioned films.
The complaint notes that of the 33 first-run films shown on January 17 -- intended to represent a typical Saturday -- 26 of them were available in captioned format, but only five of them were actually shown with captions.
"While captioning is widely available, movie exhibitors, specifically including these defendants, have in general made only minimal use of captioning, if any use at all. It is that failure to use available technology, rather than the absence of technology, that has made movies generally inaccessible" to the hearing-loss population, and frequently to their spouses, families and friends, the complaint states.
Because of the sparse use of captioning technology, people with hearing loss who need captions to understand a movie sound track have fewer movies available to them, at far fewer locations and at far fewer times than do fully hearing patrons. Wash-CAP contends that such different treatment violates the Washington Law Against Discrimination and its implementing regulations, which require that public places like movies make their services understandable to patrons with disabilities like hearing loss.
The case is scheduled to go trial in July of 2010.
