Audio clip
Laqueta Soule
It’s only appropriate that members of Chattanooga’s hearing-impaired community will be able to screen a captioned version of the movie “Wanted” this weekend since many of them have wanted such a service for a long time.
Chattanooga State Technical Community College has teamed up with Carmike Cinemas to offer the open-captioned movie at Northgate Cinema 8 at 4 and 7 p.m. on both Sunday and Monday.
“We felt there was a need,” said Laqueta Soule, who directs the school’s Realtime Reporting Program. “I think the deaf and hard-of-hearing community welcome any chance to go see a movie. I think we don’t think about when it’s just sound, they can’t hear it.”
While many theaters offer assistive listening devices for the hard-of-hearing, an open-captioned movie, where the captions remain on the screen, is not generally offered locally.
Richard Twitchell, the local contact for the Chattanooga chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America, said he and his wife, Nelda, who is hearing impaired, have not seen a movie locally since the former theater in Hamilton Place mall stopped offering them about once a month four or five years ago.
“We’re thrilled with the aspect there will be open caption movies coming back to Chattanooga,” he said. “It’s like winning the gold medal at the Olympics.”
Mrs. Soule said she did not know whether Northgate 8 will offer the service regularly, but she hopes it will if the response is good.
Local and national Carmike representatives could not be reached for comment.
Jeremy Devine, national director of marketing for Rave Motion Pictures, said the service is not widely offered in the universe of theaters. But he said most top 50 markets will offer a captioned screening occasionally.
“It’s costly,” he said, and would be difficult for a theater to recoup its investment due to a relatively small audience.
Rave Motion Pictures offers the service in Fort Worth, Texas, and Fort Wayne, Ind., Mr. Devine said, and has plans to provide it in Omaha, Neb.
AMC Theaters, which has no locations in the Chattanooga area, “is very good about this,” he said. “They’ve embraced the technology.”
According to online information at www.captions.org, the Americans With Disabilities Act guarantees hard-of-hearing people access to public movies via assistive listening systems. But there is no captioning guarantee for deaf or hard-of-hearing people who cannot adequately understand public movies with such devices.
The technologies for movie theater captions include open captioning; Rear Window captioning, which involves the use of a mirror-type viewing device on seatbacks; and the Cinema Subtitling System by Digital Theater System, which projects the captions directly onto the screen, according to information on the site.
Mrs. Soule said CSTCC’s Realtime Reporting Program officials had kicked around the idea of becoming involved in the sponsorship of a captioned screening in recent months, but the idea moved forward when Jed Mescon, who works with the school’s marketing department, agreed to contact the movie chain.
“They thought there was a need,” she said.
Before the four showings this weekend, a representative of the Realtime Reporting Program will give a brief mention of the courses offered at the school that benefit the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
A movie trailer sent to hundreds of hearing-loss people also was coded with open captioning.
Mr. Twitchell said there are a number of people eagerly awaiting the first captioned screening. Even though he is not hard of hearing, he is used to captions from watching television with his wife.
“I’m almost uncomfortable if (captioning) isn’t there,” he said.
Clint Cooper is the faith editor and a staff writer for the Times Free Press Life section. He also has been an assistant sports editor and Metro staff writer for the newspaper. Prior to the merger between the Chattanooga Free Press and Chattanooga Times in 1999, he was sports news editor for the Chattanooga Free Press, where he was in charge of the day-to-day content of the section and the section’s design. Before becoming sports ...
9 points in these 4 posts
Thanks to Clint Cooper and his publisher for covering this story for the benefit of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) in Tennessee and beyond.
Thanks to Laqueta Soule and the Chattanooga State Technical Community College for their initiative in this effort. It is the actions by community members that will make open captioning access a standard for films across the U.S. a realized standard. - The actions are small and easy, like in voting, but make a world of difference. DHH and their family and friends must make phone calls, relay calls, free web video calls to all leaders they can get to listen. Make it a yearly plan, or better, a quarterly plan.
thanks,
Greg Rice owner DeafAccessFilms.com
cont'd post
The federal law states that "movie theaters must make all reasonable accommodations for the disabled including the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and for the Blind." The above quote of Mr. Cooper, from the website, is an attempt at rhetoric, or fancy, though not necessarily logical, words to mislead the public as well as advocates for the DHH community. I'm not accusing Mr. Cooper or the website of anything wrong. The legal guarantee exists for captions for the Deaf. The law courts will consider claims of "beyond reasonable" expenses for any business that might want to be as unfair and unethical as to exclude caption service to a Deaf movie ticket buyer by claiming excessive investment requirements.
As with other federal laws like EPA or even with local laws, commercial ventures delay and deny the "reasonable" aspect as long as possible - despite the fact that with films for DHH they would have an essentially new market to sell tickets to for every single film (more then 300 produced every year in Hollywood, and many multiples of that throughout the rest of the world, which can be accessible to American DHH with subtitles).
It is only due to law suits, legitimate legal challenges from Deaf individuals and groups around the US, simply trying to get Regal, AMC and CarMike to comply with the US Federal law establishing equality for legally disabled citizens, that the national chains have begun to offer a minimal level of service.
The actual cost of the services required are very cheap. Cheaper than each theater spends on any other regular inventory purchase, from a cash register to a shipment of toilet paper. (Do a web search or Froogle search for basic video projector - they retail for about $500 to $600; 50 movie tickets at $10 = "recouped" big expense - all projector models are adequate for rear window captioning, any clear plastic works as the reflector)
thanks,
Greg Rice owner DeafAccessFilms.com
cont'd post
I make the factual case above in point 3, including reference to the essentially invalid claims of captioning being "very expensive" for theaters and studios, as well as the fact that audience is "small." If a theater had to purchase a new computer to handle the automation of the caption projection, that would be another huge financial burden of $400 - at retail, forget saving 10% to %50 of that with bulk purchases for a chain of theaters, or even 100% with donation by DHH community, businesses, PC retailers, non-profits, schools, friends for theaters in vicinity of local DHH.
So, if 1 Deaf guy takes 1 hearing girl to the captioned movies, once a week, for 1 year, every theater breaks even. Now, what if this deaf guy has a mother and/or a father? Or, heaven forbid, a sibling or 2? They are only going to screw up the profit equation for the theaters and put them in-the-black financially, long before even 1 year is complete.(sarcasm and exaggeration)
The equipment can last for several years with less maintenance than current computerized cash registers, as used in all theaters, require. A single computer could remotely handle the control of all the projectors in a theater chain for about the same cost as individual theater computer control (if centralized, control was desired).
Forget about the congenitally Deaf. If you have a couple of baby boomers who married after attending a few Who rock concerts, and are now Hard of Hearing (as are the members of the Who), then 1 baby boomer couple will pay for all current and future DHH movie goers if they attend the movies every week for just 6 months (based on numbers given above). Are there any baby boomers in Chattanooga, who might also have become married for at least 6 months, and who can afford to attend the movies every week? (Sadly, this last restriction might knock many out of contention.) For the sake of the money conserving commercial theaters, let's hope that neither one of the couple has sufficient resources to also donate a $400 computer or the $500 video projector. If that happened then every ticket to a captioned film would be just as profitable to the theater. Do people in chattanooga believe in prayer? (joke)
Greg Rice owner DeafAccessFilms.com
cont'd post
I'm sure CarMike and Regal and AMC theater chains might improve their service if DHH folks choose to overcome the lethargy promoted by 80 years of neglect by the film industry (since they stopped making "silent" films, when every film was "captioned.") and make their true number (including friends and supporting community) known - that's got to be one of the biggest groups of potential political influence next to all African-Americans, Latino-Americans, the state population of California, and the entire population of Canada!
Oh Really? Are there any colleges in Chattanooga or nearby Tennessee? If so, you can bet there are theaters offering non-English speaking films (AKA "foreign" films) that have English words plastered all over the screen, throughout the darn movie. It is technically distinct from open caption, but definitely more accessible than over 99% of US made and US shown films. Deaf Access Films has the only website which currently aggregates the film showtime information for subtitled films as well as all other types of captioned films. (disclosure: I own DeafAccessFilms.com and it is a commercial venture)
Greg Rice owner DeafAccessFilms.com
Perhpas Mr. Devine is attempting to avoid disappointment for local Chattanooga area DHH by suggesting captioning is not in many theaters, or even in theaters in the top 50 markets, very often. Whatever his intention, the claim is misleading and false. One way to prove it wrong is to make a daily check of one ore more theaters for each of a few top, national movie markets - Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston. Search for captions.
You could also visit DeafAccessFilms.com and review the current schedules of films currently available in many of the top 50 markets, without any need for multiple search queries. If you did this, I'd appreciate just a note or comment on our feedback form. It's not enforced or mandatory, but to keep the system alive we need to show evidence of usage and feedback from DHH to the film industry. Really!
The fact is that Regal and AMC theaters have at least a few theaters in each of the top 50 markets (or perhaps only 44 currently) offering open captioned films or films with rear window captions. The showings are usually 3 to 7 days in full run. The theaters have not been required to make public their attendance figures so figures for improvement of efforts toward Equal Access parity with the hearing majority are not available to embarrass them, either emotionally or financially, through enforced expenditures by law.
Thanks, Ms. Soule. In the communities with DHH people are sign language interpreters, audiologists, telephone call relay operators, and real-time-reporters providing closed captioning on TV and possibly live, open captions in theaters, if asked nicely. 8-p Perhaps the Chattanooga Times Free Press could be coinvicned by sufficient outcry (phone calls, letters, post-cards, e-mails from self identified DHH and friends of DHH) to make such an extravagant donation to a theater or 2 (or a chain) in TN? What do I know, I'm in California?
thanks, Greg Rice owner Deaf Access Films
cont'd and final post in series
* People and organizations to contact with thanks and with requests: 1. Chattanooga State Technical Community College 2. Laqueta Soule 3. Clint Cooper 4. Chattanooga Times Free Press 5. Hearing Loss Association of America 6. Richard Twitchell 7. Rave Motion Pictures 8. Jeremy Devine 9. Carmike Theaters 10.Northgate Cinema manager
Try a simple test/survey with each person you contact. Ask them to state their personal estimate for the number of people with some form of hearing loss in the whole U.S. I bet any taker that none will guess close to the truth, 30 million people. Not even if you call your US Congressional representative. Start with the Mayor of Chattanooga, move up to county seat and then congressional rep. and TN senator for Chattanooga area.
Tell them all you have an interest in this issue of equal access for DHH, 30 million ?Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans. Tell them what they're doing right, and what still needs to be done. Ask for public reporting of attendance figures for Deaf and Hard of Hearing in movie theaters.
thanks,
Greg Rice owner DeafAccessFilms.com
Chattanooga State Technical Community College 4501 Amnicola Highway Chattanooga, Tennessee 37406-1097 (423) 697-4404 or 1-866-547-3733
laqueta.soule@chattanoogastate.edu
Realtime Reporting http://www.chattanoogastate.edu/Off-Campus/east/earealtime.asp
Or login with:
New Account