Experiencing the Magic of the Movies, Deaf or Hearing.

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.” 

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. 

Century 14 Downtown Movie Theater
in Albuquerque, NM offers CaptiView captioning devices,
headphones for the hearing impaired, & cochlear implant transmitters.

 The advancements that movie theaters are making for the Deaf are improving over time. Along with the CaptiView devices, the Century 14 Downtown theater offers cochlear transmitters that transmit the sound to someone’s cochlear implant. Also, with the glasses being released nationwide, it can be assumed that the Deaf will start enjoying their trips to the movies even more. These advances mean a great deal to the Deaf world and will hopefully be just the beginning of new accommodations in order to make it easier for the Deaf to go out into the world and experience things without having to worry. At the end of the interview, when asked what she hopes to see in the future for the Deaf world, Rudy says, “I hope that all theaters offer closed captions for us. Like I said, it unites our world with the Hearing world.”