Cinemas raise ire of deaf and blind
Carolyn Webb
December 7, 2009
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FILMMAKER Adam Elliot has joined disabled and advocacy groups who have denounced cinema companies for applying for an exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act.
The Hoyts, Village, Greater Union and Reading chains have asked the Australian Human Rights Commission for a 2½-year exemption from complaints about providing captioning for the deaf and audio description for the blind.
In return, the cinemas say they will install the equipment to run the technology for three screenings a week in 35 cinemas in Australia.
Veronica Pardo, executive director of disability organisation Arts Access Victoria, calculated that there were more than 40,000 movie screenings a week in Australia and, of these, only 105 would be captioned and audio described.
''This is equal to less than 0.3 per cent of all movies screened per week,'' Ms Pardo said.
Elliot, creator of animations Mary and Max and Harvie Krumpet and patron of The Other Film Festival, said it seemed a ''pretty poor deal''.
''We all expect the choice to be able to go and enjoy any film, at any session, at any cinema. Offering anything less than this to people just because they have a disability is simply unfair and unacceptable,'' he said.
Ms Pardo said the exemption would mean that for 2½ years ''Australians who are deaf, hard of hearing, legally blind and vision impaired … stand to lose their right to complain to the Human Rights Commission about the lack of provision of captioning and audio description services at any of the 125 cinemas [1182 screens] owned by these exhibitors''.
In a letter to Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes seen by The Age, Hoyts executive Frank Perikleous said the offer would greatly expand on the 12 Australian cinemas now offering three sessions a week of current films with captioning and was being done ''in good faith'' to help the disabled enjoy films. He said the proposal involved ''a significant investment of capital outlay'' and was made ''in good faith to support, encourage and make available to the Australian community of people with a vision and a hearing impairment an increased opportunity to enjoy feature films''.
But Joanne Beckwith, a mother of two disabled children - one of whom is profoundly deaf - said the offer was a joke.
She said cinemas provided ramps and toilets for the disabled, but continued to discriminate by offering a severely limited range of films and session times.
''It flies in face of any legislation on equal access and equal opportunity,'' she said.
In a submission to the commission, she writes: ''My daughter who is now 11 and profoundly deaf has never been able to watch a movie suitably rated for her age group during the school holidays in Melbourne.''
Michael Simpson of Vision Australia said vision impaired people's access to films was ''very poor''.
He estimated that fewer than two in every 100 films imported to Australia were audio described.
''There is no point having the equipment there if they then don't screen audio-described material,'' he said.
Victorian Deaf Society's chief executive, Graeme Kelly, said that 35 cinemas with captioning was ''inadequate and inconsistent with the expected growth in numbers of people with some form of hearing loss from one in six now, to one in four by 2050''.
Mr Perikleous could not be contacted for a response.
The Human Rights Commission is accepting public submissions until today via email:
disabdis@humanrights.gov.au
The Federal Government is also calling for public submissions, until January 29, to a discussion paper, Access to Electronic Media for the Hearing and Vision Impaired.
This story was found at:
Cinemas raise ire of deaf and blind - Film - Entertainment - theage.com.au
