December 1999

The NWPC welcomes the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry into discrimination by a cinema and a cinema chain in lack of provision of captions. This is long overdue. Australian film distributors must make efforts to make their services accessible.

From time to time in Australia, the Deaf community organises a free captioned movie evening. These events are immensely popular; there are often between 200 to 300 people in attendance. Such events are not only an opportunity to view a recent movie but they are also a great social event. Deaf people are able to enjoy the benefits of a larger screen, and the atmosphere of a cinema audience. However, such access is rare and deaf audiences are still required to wait until a new release film has gone to video before it is possible to watch it with captions, be it at a public screening or at home. Even then, only those with a closed-caption video decoder are able to access videos; the majority must wait till the film actually goes to television. With the introduction of pay television a lot of the best movies from cinema are

being sold directly to pay television, many recent releases are therefore by-passing free-to-air television. So Deaf and hearing impaired viewers don't get any access to those new movies as there is no captioning on pay television, or we must purchase an additional piece of equipment to decode video captions. Deaf people, as members of the larger community, must enjoy the same level of access as others, and at the same time.

Many Deaf and hearing impaired people attend the movies and only go to arthouses where foreign movies are shown and also action American movies. Movies such as 'Oscar and Lucinda' - which won several Oscars - is not a good movie for Deaf and hearing impaired audiences as things currently stand due to the large amount of dialogue. If there were an opportunity for accessing captioned movies, then 1.7 million more people would benefit from viewing such a well made and popular Australian film.

Deaf and hearing impaired people do not want to be segregated but would like the opportunity to access what is regarded as a common form of entertainment that is enjoyed by many thousands of people of all ages. Deaf parents who have hearing children often take their kids to see movies but are unable to follow the dialogue - a simple pleasure is often denied these families. Deaf parents are unable to check the language content for swearing. Also they cannot explain the dialogue that the children don't understand, which means often they cannot explain some aspects of the movie at all. Parents are being denied the opportunity to assist with their child's education in life.

Looking at the situation in the US, voluntary steps have been taken by cinema companies to make their product accessible.

As a background to these efforts, US legislation requires that all video-based media be accessible irrespective of the delivery mode (1996 Communications Act). This includes television, pay television, videos, CD-ROM, DVD. There is a timetable in place to achieve full captioning by 2006. Today around 95% of content is already accessible.

At this stage, US cinema companies are not subject to mandatory captioning laws. However, captioning is so prevalent in the United States that an increasing number of cinemas are exhibiting captioned movies. The technology for cinema captioning has been trialed, and up and running, in movie theatres in the US for a number of years. As much of the ground work has been laid by research organisations overseas, the costs to Australian cinemas of operating a captioning system is significantly reduced.

In the US, cinema captioning has been in open-captioned form, and also using newly devised techniques for individual caption viewing such as the Rear Window^® captioning system.

The caption files for latest release movies from overseas already exist by the time the films are released in Australia. The cost of making captions is not a prohibitive factor. There would be initial infrastructure costs involved in setting up a system which requires individual screens. However, compared with the overall cost of a cinema complex, this cannot amount to an expenditure which would cause financial hardship, certainly not for the larger chains.

There is also the option of screening an open captioned film. This would only require the additional cost of a second master.

Both these methods are feasible for the Australian situation. With the right commitment, cinema organisations here can decide which captioning option most suits their operation.

Yet to date Australian distributors have not taken up the technology to make their services accessible.

Recently the Federal Government legislated captioning quotas in an effort to make Australian television more accessible to deaf viewers. As these measures are limited to television access, there needs to be a parallel mechanism which will make cinema, and any other content, accessible also. The example of the television networks show that without a formal mechanism being imposed to improve access, increases are too slow, and lag behind overseas counterparts in the US and the UK. Deaf and hard of hearing Australians cannot rely on the good will of service providers alone to ensure cinema is accessible.

The National Working Party on Captioning strongly supports the need for captions to be given to movies. This is a simple right not a privilege and with the current technology available and with the movie industry generating more and more revenue there are absolutely no arguments as to why movies should not be captioned.

Peter Cianchi

Catherine Clark, Chair

Keith Smart

Louis Bonoguore

Diana Hodgetts

Bob Willis

Marie Redmond

Australian Association of the Deaf

Brett Casey

Charles Allan

Michelle Rodda

Karen Dempsey

Sheila Rimmer

Joanne Baumgartner, Deputy Chair

Ann Porter

Ron Rudder