In making the commitment, Landmark emphasised its focus on arthouse, avant-garde movies that may appeal to more mature audiences, which naturally includes an older population with a greater prevalence of hearing loss. Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff believes that the move may benefit Landmark significantly more than it would benefit the typical suburban cinemas that cater more to younger audiences.
Landmark will experiment with closed caption devices but is testing Doremi’s CaptiView at a small number of venues. There are plans to obtain Sony’s subtitle glasses to also test them. For locations that won’t convert to digital, Landmark will look at the possibility of installing Rear Window Captioning devices.
The commitment by Landmark heralds the first move by an independent chain to implement digital captioning worldwide. There has been no word on the introduction of audio description in this agreement. In Australia, independent cinemas through the Independent Cinemas Association of Australia are in the process of negotiating a sector move to digital. It is expected that an access strategy for both captioning and audio description will be part of the transition.
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