The Connecticut Association for the Deaf and some of its members are filing under the Americans with Disabilities Act after repeated attempts to attend accessible sessions at Bow Tie cinemas were abandoned, due to captioning devices being unavailable or not working.
In a media release [40 KB], the Association claims that Bow Tie Cinemas provides very few or no captioning devices for the Deaf and hearing impaired at its 11 Connecticut complexes, including ones in Hartford and West Hartford counties. Ironically, Hartford County is home to over 4,200 Deaf people as well as the American School for the Deaf, which is only one mile from one of Bow Tie’s cinemas.
Among the claim is the criticism that Bow Tie has informed patrons that closed caption devices were available, only for them to arrive and learn that only two devices were available and were already in use.
Similar lawsuits in the USA historically have been around failure to provide access services. This lawsuit however specifies that although closed captioning equipment is available, there are not enough devices available in each location and there are operational issues preventing their use.
This situation reflects similar criticism from Australian cinema patrons around closed caption units and the operational issues that prevent their proper use, as revealed by our cinema questionnaire conducted last year.
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