Feds consider movie-captioning rule
As previously reported, the federal Department of Justice is considering adopting a regulation that would require movie theaters to show half of their movies with closed captions. Because Congress gave the DOJ the authority to adopt regulations interpreting the portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applies to movie theaters, a DOJ regulation would become the law of the land, and for that reason, getting it right is really important.
We were pleased to see DOJ finally getting involved with the critical issue of movie captioning. That said, though, we don't think the proposal for 50% access phased in over five years got it even close to right. In our opinion, there is simply no reason why the major corporate theater owners cannot equip every one of their theaters to show captions for all movies that have had captions prepared. We also think the five-year phase-in is unnecessary, since the major theater chains intend to fully convert to digital projection in far less time, and can easily equip their theaters to show captioned movies at the time they convert to digital.
DOJ held three public hearings on the movie-captioning proposal and three other proposals dealing with website access, access to 911 emergency services, and accessible furniture. The third and last hearing took place in San Francisco on January 10, and a number of us testified about movie captioning.
The hearing itself was a model of accessibility. All of the testimony was real-time captioned and ASL-interpreted. It was also streamed live over the internet.
I testified on behalf of a number of organizations to the effect that captioning should be required, but that rather than impose any sort of performance standard like 50%, theaters should be required to provide full accessibility unless doing so would constitute an "undue burden," which would need to be determined on a case-by-case, business-by-business basis. Other very good testimony came from the attorneys directly involved in the Harkins movie-captioning case, Rose Daly-Rooney of the Arizona Attorney General's Office and from J.J. Rico of the Arizona Disability Law Center.
(Both thevideo and a written transcript are now available on line. My testimony is at 271:02 of the video).
I spoke afterwards to John Wodatch, who presided at the hearing. What I found curious was that even though DOJ was proposing a rule to require only 50% captioning, it filed a brief in Arizona saying that the proper standard was "undue burden," and that determining what constituted an "undue burden" was a matter for courts rather than for the DOJ. He indicated to me that the 50% requirement was really nothing more than a starting point, but that DOJ was very seriously considering the arguments that "undue burden" must be determined on an entity-by-entity basis rather than being suitable for an industry-wide rule. He also said he was impressed by the testimony from witnesses like J.J. Rico and me concerning the financial ability of the major movie theaters.
Comments on the proposed rule are being accepted through Monday, Jan. 26. Here are the comments I filed on behalf of several organizations. Individuals wishing to comment can go online to , www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOJ-CRT-2010-0007-0001, hit the "submit comment" button and file their personal comments that way.
