How to make 12 movie screens accessible
File a lawsuit, settle, and have the losing side pay your court costs, that’s how.
This week, the proposed settlement in the case of Ball et al. vs AMC et al. was ratified by a judge. A dozen movie screens in metropolitan Washington, D.C. will be equipped with WGBH MoPix systems.
- “Movie theaters to show captions for the deaf”
- “Deaf moviegoers in D.C. win, will get theater captions”
Great, right?
Yes, in principle. But both sides paid for their stubbornness – deaf captioning viewers pressing and intervening in the case and the movie houses.
- Kevin Ball, a deaf person, was the primary plaintiff. He pressed for Rear Window® captioning.
- AMC and Loews, the movie chains, resisted and lost. The settlement agreement, which is not the same as a finding against these defendants in court, nonetheless requires the chains to install at least 12 MoPix systems and pay the plaintiffs’ court costs, a cool $260,000.
- The Coalition for Movie Captioning intervened in the case, arguing, among many other points, that the correct accessibility method is open captioning. Jurisprudence on the Americans with Disabilities Act is utterly consistent: Open captioning cannot be required under the ADA. We don’t have to like it, but that’s the reality.
- Other intervenors raised largely irrelevant or inaccurate objections.
Now, far be it from me to sound like I disapprove of the outcome. I’m in favour of more captioning and more description. I’ve put in more time watching Rear Window captioning than anybody else. (Maybe in a year or so my record will have been eclipsed. Nonetheless, 130 hours are a hell of a lot of hours.) I am uniquely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. It has many strengths for the majority of viewers.
But here we go again with deaf people acting like whatever they need is the maximum everyone needs. If you’re gonna launch a class-action suit, why not broaden the class? Instead of pushing for captioning, push for accessibility. Exactly as I stated before, here we have a group of deaf persons essentially saying “Give us what we need and stop there.” Captioning is what deaf people need, and once they get that, they act like the problem’s solved.
What happened to all the blind people? Wouldn’t a class-action suit that comprised deaf/hard-of-hearing and blind/visually-impaired moviegoers have been a better idea?
All’s well that ends well, you might say. According to WGBH reports, AMC and Loews are simply installing full MoPix systems, with captioning and description both. Well, that’s grand, and we shouldn’t begrudge a desirable outcome. However, the methods stank.
Interestingly, I give reasonably good odds that, had the lawsuit been launched by blind persons, they would have included captioning in their demands. But the odds I give are only reasonably good. If they’re willing to lobby for description, but not captioning, of “a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sadomasochistic community,” I put little past them. (Making any kind of movie accessible to some people but not others is my complaint. Some of my best friends are gay Christian sadomasochists; they certainly go to the same bars I do. Nonetheless, it’s an unusual movie to go to the wall on, don’t you think?)
Money
The theatre owners also played their cards poorly. (But in my experience, that’s what they do.) The writing was on the wall from the start. Since they’re now on hook for lawyers’ fees equal to approximately twenty additional MoPix installations, won’t it be interesting when some other deaf person or group lobbies those two chains for further accessible screens? Essentially, D.C. captioning viewers now will enjoy 12 accessible screens for the price of 32. Good job!
And while we’re discussing money, let’s look at a gem from a brief filed in the case that summarizes testimony by Larry Goldberg, Director of Media Access at WGBH Educational Foundation. (Emphasis added.)
Mr. Goldberg testified that increased implementation of RWC will provide funding for WGBH, a non-profit organization, to improve RWC and address the concerns that have been raised regarding its use…. Mr. Goldberg was clear that proceeds from the sale of RWC are devoted to the improvement of the system, meaning that the RWC to be installed under the [proposed settlement] will improve over time. Thus, the viewer screen, gooseneck, and data wall may all be improved with additional use and funds…. Mr. Goldberg’s testimony [was] that nothing will improve the technology of RWC or increase its ease of use as much as the funding provided by more installations.
Hence, one reason WGBH supported the installation of Rear Window captioning in this case was because it would financially benefit. It was certainly very interesting to read an affidavit by Goldberg that discussed the competing DTS-CSS captioning system, though the affidavit could not be considered critical or disparaging. Nonetheless, in the affidavit, WGBH testified about a competitor.
(However, in another wrinkle, every MoPix installation requires a DTS controller. DTS also sells the DTS-CSS system. Hence they’re not really competitors, and DTS would receive a dozen new sales no matter which technology had been chosen. Sweet, huh?)
Of course, the cost of a MoPix installation is largely consumed by the hardware, chiefly the DTS playback box; the LED datawall; emitter for the infrared audio description (or transmitter if using an FM system); and finally the reflectors and headsets. WGBH does not really benefit from theatres’ expenditure on that equipment. However, DTS definitely does: Its controller boxes are at the heart of the MoPix and its own DTS-CSS systems. Everyone’s gotta make a living in this business (including me); I just want everyone to be aware of who’s making the money.
The proceeds from these dozen installations will improve Rear Window captioning, we are told. But in an early affidavit in this case by Goldberg (undated in my electronic copy, but metadata show it as having been created 2003.11.13), he states that “there is a license fee of $2,000 that must be paid to WGBH as the patent holder of the technology.” We can view this statement as an estimate of the funds WGBH will directly receive from each installation.
So here’s the punchline: If all it takes to improve Rear Window captioning is a sum of money so small it’s a joke ($24,000), then why have we been made to wait? Why force two companies to pay ten times that amount in compensating the other side’s legal fees in a lawsuit? Why not increase the captioning and description service fee by a grand and wait for two dozen movies to flow through the shop?
Lessons
The writing’s on the wall, folks: You can’t run a movie chain without accessible screens. And for the entire industry, it’s cheap. Your legal costs in fighting a case will dwarf your expenditures to simply make your theatres accessible. Don’t fight a battle you’re going to lose – and for which you’ll end up paying the other side’s costs.
Throughout the entire topic of cinema accessibility, we’re always talking about trivial sums of money – rarely more than $25,000 to do anything. Even small independent films, to the extent that such exist anymore, can afford costs that small. It is extremely inexpensive to make movie theatres and movies accessible. Quit nickel-and-diming us here.
Relevant documents
Purely for convenience, I assembled and converted several documents relevant to the settling of the case. I converted the PDFs to tagged accessible format and did text-only conversions which won’t be perfect. Don’t consider any of these documents official if they come from my server; they’re for reading ease only.
Interestingly, the only documents I have are from the plaintiffs, but since this is a settlement and not an imposed ruling, I assume they adequately represent the views of the defendants. If not, defendants’ counsel can simply provide me with files and I’ll add them here.
- The settlement itself
- Affidavit by Larry Goldberg
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- Microsoft Word (edited to single-spacing and uniform font)
- My PDF
- My plain text
- Plaintiffs’ Response to Comments (that is, response to objections filed by intervenors)
- Objections by Coalition for Movie Captioning
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- Official PDF and homepage
- My PDF
- My plain text
- Plaintiffs’ Post-Fairness-Hearing Brief (making the case that the settlement is fair and reasonable)