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AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest movie theater chain, will offer open captions at 240 locations in the United States, and the company’s CEO will make such a move. specification As “a real advance for those who are hard of hearing or where English is a second language”.
Movie theaters provide captions through devices that some customers have identified as inappropriate and defective. However, open captions are displayed on the screen similar to captions; everyone in the cinema sees the same subtitles on the same screen.
Advocates of the deaf and hard of hearing have long sought more and better quality subtitles, but moviegoers worry that non-deaf people don’t like to see subtitles in movies.
“In some cases, putting open captions on the screen reduces movie ticket sales,” said John Fithian, president and general manager of the National Association of Theater Owners, although he said the evidence was mostly anecdotal. He said the industry, whose business has been battered by the pandemic, is examining the relationship between open captions and ticket sales.
Christian Vogler, a professor at Gallaudet University in Washington that serves the deaf, said in an email: for theaters.” He praised AMC’s move. announced last week“It is important for a major national chain to change its mind and even open its floodgates for others to do the same,” he said.
Other major theater chains, including Regal Cinemas and Cinemark, did not respond to messages seeking comment, and AMC did not say what hastened the company’s decision.
But Mr Fithian, whose group represents both large chains and small theater owners, said the industry has been paying more attention to open captioning lately because advocates of the deaf and hard of hearing have expressed concerns about captioning devices.
“AMC is the first to make their release public,” he said. “But it’s all part of an industry-wide effort to improve access, both by making sure our captioning systems work and by increasing the number of voluntary open captioning programs nationwide.”
The announcement brought some hope to the deaf and hard of hearing.
South Florida’s Megan Albertz was at a brewery Saturday with a subtitled version of the 1995 Robin Williams movie “Jumanji” playing in the background.
Ms. Albertz, 29, was born with severe hearing loss and after watching “Jumanji” without subtitles before, she realized that she had actually misunderstood the scenes or the dialogue of the characters.
“Over the years, I’ve rewatched movies with subtitles that I’ve watched in theaters on various streaming platforms, and I’m constantly amazed at how many languages or lines I’m missing,” he said in an email.
He described AMC’s decision as a step towards “accessibility for all” but wanted the company and industry to continue expanding open captioning options.
In recent years, due to lawsuits, legislation, and pressure from disability rights advocates, the theater industry has made subtitled equipment more widely available. This equipment includes Sony glasses used by Regal Cinemas and the Captiview device which attaches to the cup holder of the cinema seat and displays the subtitles.
Gallaudet University’s Dr. “These devices have their own fans,” Vogler said, “but they’re also widely despised, both because of their propensity to cut out, and because of misconfiguration, running out of batteries, and lower usability and ergonomics compared to other devices,” Vogler said in an open caption.
AMC said that only certain, clearly designated showtimes will include open captions, and that “the vast majority” of showtimes will still be offered with closed captions.
The company’s CEO, Adam Aron, noted The expansion is just in time for Marvel’s “Eternals,” which will hit theaters November 5 and features Lauren Ridloff, who has been deaf since birth and plays the first deaf superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In an interview with The New York Times in August, Ridloff said that most movie theaters are not accessible to the deaf, who are often seen as “upstarts.”
“You have to use a special caption device to watch captions in the cinema, and it’s a headache because most of the time the devices don’t work.” said. “Then you have to go back to the front desk and find someone to help, and when they realize it’s not working, it won’t be subtitled, the movie is half done.”
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