Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016
The U.S. Department of Justice (Department) has published an advance copy of a final rule that amends its regulation implementing title III of the ADA, which covers public accommodations and commercial facilities—including movie theaters. Public accommodations that own, lease, or operate movie theaters have an existing obligation to provide effective communication to persons with disabilities through the use of auxiliary aids and services, and this rule provides greater specificity as to what those obligations are when showing digital movies. The rule explicitly requires public accommodations that own, lease, or operate movie theaters to provide closed movie captioning and audio description to patrons with hearing and vision disabilities whenever such entities exhibit digital movies that are distributed with such features, as well as to have available a specific number of fully operational captioning and audio description devices.
More details about the final rule, and about the ADA generally, can be found on the Pacific ADA Center website at www.adapacific.org.
Article Credit: U.S. Department of Justice