[Colorado-talk] Lasser Sues Hamilton for Access

Dan Burke burke.dall at gmail.com
Thu Mar 16 01:01:02 UTC 2017


Found at

http://www.kunc.org/post/blind-theatergoers-hamilton-lawsuit-aims-spotlight-broadway-accessibility

A Blind Theatergoer's 'Hamilton' Lawsuit Aims Spotlight On Broadway
Accessibility
By JEFF LUNDEN • MAR 14, 2017
PROGRAMAll Things Considered
Originally published on March 14, 2017 4:33 pm
click xai=AKAOjsvimFG2ufa0JDNO…
A recent lawsuit brought by a blind theatergoer against the producers
of the hit musical Hamilton has highlighted Broadway's spotty track
record in serving audiences with disabilities.
Hamilton opened almost a year and a half ago, but it's still the
hottest ticket on Broadway. Mark Lasser of Denver, who is blind,
wanted to take his wife to the show and get audio description services
to help him enjoy a performance. That means he hoped to get a headset
and hear the stage action being described in real time, during the
show. But he discovered that Hamilton doesn't offer this particular
service.
"I think what this suit brings to light is that you have a hidden
population out there that is not gaining the full access to Broadway,"
says attorney Scott Dinin, who is representing Lasser in the
class-action suit against the show's producers and theater owner.
"Sometimes you need a lawsuit like this to bring this to the public's
attention," Dinin says.
Broadway has taken great strides in the decades since the Americans
with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was passed in 1990. Last year, a new
website called Theatre Access NYC launched — a collaboration between
the Broadway League, which represents producers and theater owners,
and the Theatre Development Fund, a nonprofit that offers discount
tickets and services to theatergoers with disabilities.
Lisa Carling, TDF's director of accessibility programs, says the goal
of the website is to provide one stop where people with disabilities
can find accessible performances.
A quick glance shows that most Broadway theaters are wheelchair
accessible and offer open captioning and hearing assistance devices;
there are also occasional special performances for people on the
autism spectrum. But only four long-running musicals, including The
Lion King and The Book of Mormon, offer audio description.
Audio description has been around since the 1980s, says Mark
Annunziato, vice president for operations and engineering at Sound
Associates, a company that rents audio and video equipment to Broadway
shows and develops audio description services.
In the past, groups of blind and low-vision customers attended special
performances with a live interpreter. Since Broadway shows now use
computers to trigger light, set and sound cues, automated audio
description can be set up to work with those systems and offered at
every performance, with minimal cost — especially when Broadway
musicals have budgets between $5 million and $25 million.
"The base system varies, but it usually ranges in and around $20,000,"
Annunziato says. "So that would be the automation system, the computer
system and the wireless broadcast system to all the devices."
Then add $5,000 more to write, record and sync a script, and a monthly
maintenance fee. When you're talking about a hit show, the cost of
setting up an audio description system more than pays for itself, says
Howard Sherman, of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.
"Certainly once a show sets up a sustained run — and when we look at
musicals that run five, 10, 15, 20 years — it really is a very small
price to pay for opening up a show to a much, much wider audience,"
Sherman says.
That's really what Dinin, Lasser's attorney, is trying to say with
this legal action. He is not seeking damages for his client — he
can't, under the terms of the ADA. He is trying to make sure that
theater becomes more inclusive, by spotlighting the problem, using
Broadway's biggest hit.
"Audio description is so necessary," Dinin says. "It's the right thing
to do. It's not that expensive. And it's just a thinking process. It's
a mindset. We have to get a mindset: How do we increase inclusion? It
should be top-of-mind. Equality, accommodation and respect. Because
once people put that at the decision-making table, all the services
will flow from that."
With the case ongoing, Hamilton's producers declined to comment for
this story. So did a number of other Broadway producers.
Radio editor Tom Cole and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report.
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.




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