From:	Alexandra Irini 
Sent:	Wednesday, 25 November 2009 12:41 PM
To:	disabdis
Subject:	cinemas exemption

Dear Sir/Madam
I wish to voice my objection to the recent application made by Village Roadshow, Greater Union, 
Hoyts and Reading Cinemas requesting exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act for a 
period of two and a half years.
This means that Australians who are Deaf, hard of hearing, legally blind and vision impaired, 
including older Australians, 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 four exhibitors.
If the exemption is granted, cinemas will provide captioning and audio description for a minimum of 
three (3) screenings in 35 cinemas around Australia.
Let’s put that into perspective:
?	Jointly, these exhibitors have 1,182 screens across Australia.
?	They show approximately 30 movies per screen every week.
?	That’s a total of 41,370 screenings per week (1182 screens x 5 sessions per day x 7 days)
?	Of these, only 105 will be captioned and audio described. This is equal to less than 0.3% of all 
movies screened per week.
?	At this pace, it will take 1000 years to achieve universal access, that is, access to all screenings 
in all cinemas.
Please ensure that the requested exemptions are not granted.

Regards
Alexandra Irini