Sub communities exist within any city. One that a lot of
Albuquerque, New Mexico citizens are not fully aware of is the large and
growing Deaf community. The Deaf throughout the city get together for different
social events, such as Deaf Night Out (DNO) at different restaurants, camping
trips, and on occasion, trips to the movies. Trips to the movies can be
problematic, considering not every theater in Albuquerque offers the same
accommodations.
Accommodations for the Deaf have advanced over time. The community
is still striving to integrate these accommodations with more mainstream markets,
and movie theaters are a large area that they want to see improvements in.
American Sign Language professor at the University of New
Mexico, Bonnie Rudy was born completely deaf. She has lived her whole life
adjusting to new advances in technology to accommodate the Deaf. “Deaf
accommodations now and in the past are very different,” Rudy explains. “There
were no captions around until I was about 30.” Closed captioning came around
for television shows long before they did in movie theaters. Rudy recalls the
first show she watched with captions was “Three’s Company”. “It united the Deaf
and the Hearing. We could all laugh together instead of me having to use my
imagination for what was going on.” In 1990, President Bush Sr. signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. It stated that all television shows had to have a closed caption
option. Around 1994, the movie theaters followed, but with only one movie, once
a month offering captions. Rudy said,
“That’s the way it was for years.”
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| The CaptiView captioning devices that sit in the viewer's cup holder. |
Today, different theaters offer different styles of
accommodations for the Deaf. Rudy only goes to the movies every once in a
while, but when she does, she wants it to be a great experience, just like
anybody else would. Sometimes, she attends Century Rio 24 in Albuquerque. The
devices that Century Rio 24 offers are portable screens, called CaptiView, that
display captions. They sit right in the cup holder. The disadvantage to these
devices is that they make it difficult for the viewer to focus on the screen
because they are always looking down to read. “You always have to look up and
down, up and down, and you can’t always concentrate,” Rudy says. Melissa Bolin,
and employee at Cinemark 8, and Robin from Century 14 Downtown explained that
their theaters also offer CaptiView. Due to the disadvantage of these devices, Rudy,
and many other people in the Deaf community, enjoy going to Cottonwood Mall
United Artists theater because they have provided movie viewings with closed captions
right on the screen. “In the past, the booking department would select a movie
and play it once a week with closed captions”, said Dominic, the manager at the
Cottonwood Mall Theater. However, three weeks prior to the interview, Sony
released a pair of glasses to select Regal Cinemas that allow for captions to
be projected on the inside of the lens. These are so new, in fact, that Bonnie
wasn’t even aware of them. The glasses are rather high-tech and really do work
well. The only disadvantage is that whenever you move, the captions move
wherever you go, whether you are looking at the screen or at the floor. Then
again, that is a minor issue compared to the great advancement that they are.
These glasses will allow for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired to select any movie,
at any time, any day of the week and be able to watch them with captions, and
among other Hearing people. They will be released nationwide mainly to Regal
Cinemas first in the next couple of months.
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| Century 14 Downtown Movie Theater in Albuquerque, NM offers CaptiView captioning devices, headphones for the hearing impaired, & cochlear implant transmitters. |
