[il-talk] AMC accessibility

[Kelly Pierce]

Jenny,

The Illinois Attorney General was enforcing the Americans with
Disabilities Act, a federal law applicable in all states and
territories.  One of the recitals in the settlement agreement states:

“WHEREAS, The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] believes that
captioning and audio description technologies are auxiliary aids as
defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C 12103 and are
thus required in any auditorium at an AMC theater under the ADA, 42
U.S.C 12101 et seq.”

Specifically, Section 36.303 of title III of the ADA’s regulations was
enforced.  The issue is not of different laws, but aggressiveness of
enforcement.  Here in Illinois, the ACB folks and supporters were
responsible for filing more than 20 individual complaints with the
Attorney general against AMC on audio description and the Illinois
affiliate filed an organizational complaint. The state protection and
advocacy agency also filed a complaint on behalf of some individuals
with hearing and vision loss and several disability organizations.
This community-wide effort along with an attorney general who openly
stated that she wanted to take on non-traditional disability-access
cases laid the foundation for this outcome.

As has been said endless times at conventions and chapter meetings,
extraordinary access solutions like this don’t happen by accident or a
single individual wishing it were so. They are a result of collective
action, community engagement, and long-term relationship building.
Hopefully, blind leaders in other states, including Florida, will
actively seek aggressive enforcement of the ADA like folks here in
Illinois have done.

Kelly






On 5/25/12, Pittman Enterprises & Associates <pittmanenterprises at att.net> wrote:
> Here in Chicago at a couple of the theaters that has not been the case.
> They have the use of the headphones in certain theaters.  For example, if
> the theater itself has 5 screens, it will have the headphones in theater 1
> all the time.
>
>
> Debbie Pittman
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Jenny Keller
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 4:33 PM
> To: NFB of Illinois Mailing List
> Subject: [il-talk] AMC accessibility
>
> It's not law in Florida where I'm from.  But, they have it in the AMC
> theaters down there too.
>
> Here's the thing, I haven't listened to this yet, but in Florida, the
> closed, or open captioning, and descriptive headphone options are only in
> certain theater auditoriums, and at certain times of the day.  Not usually
> when normal people go to the movies.
>
> I hope, that AMC doesn't get away with doing the same thing here.  Most
> deaf
> and visually impaired, or blind people would like to go at the same time
> normal people go, and with their families and friends, but you can't do
> that
> in Florida.  That's how they've gotten around that loop whole.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> Jenny
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