© May, 2007 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
When it comes to finding captioned movies and plays, many hard of hearing people don’t know where to turn. One lady lamented, “I've often heard that there are movie theatres with captioning but have never heard of one near me. Is there some central place that lists which theatres have such help available?” Another hard of hearing person questioned, “How do you learn of captioned movies shown in your city? Are they listed as such in your local newspaper movie line-up or where?”
The good news is that there are several organizations dedicated to helping us by listing which movies and live theatre events are captioned.
MoPix (Motion Picture Access) (http://www.mopix.org) lists movies that are currently showing that are both closed captioned (typically rear window captioned) and have descriptive audio, and those that are just closed captioned. (See the “Access Technologies” sidebar below for descriptions of these various technologies.) To view a list of the movie theatres in the USA and Canada that show closed captioned movies—and if they have more than one auditorium, which auditorium(s) in these theatres are equipped to show such movies—click on the “View theaters” link immediately above the list of captioned movies on the MoPix website.
InSight Cinema (http://www.insightcinema.org) lists the open captioned movie theatres in the USA. To find them, click on the “InSight theatres” link on the left of their web page. If you are interested in live captioned theatre and cultural events, scroll halfway down the page and click on the large “Live Captioned Theatre & Cultural Events” link.
C2 (Caption Coalition) Inc (http://www.c2net.org/List.htm) lists upcoming open captioned performances by date and location for several months into the future. (Note: there are other theaters that also do captioned performances, but not by C2 (Caption Coalition) Inc. As a result, this list is not complete, but it is way better than nothing!)
Once you know which theaters are equipped to show captioned movies, and which movies are captioned, ask Fomdi, a cute little guy that lives at http://www.fomdi.com to find any captioned movies (both open and closed captioned) that are showing in movie theatres near you.
All you need to do is enter your state, city or zip, the maximum distance from your location you want to travel (5 to 40 miles) and the day you want to go, click “find”—and in a few seconds Fomdi will produce a list of the captioned movies near you. Again, the results may not be perfect, but they are far better than nothing.
Note: Fomdi can only show what the theatres give him. The theatres give their schedule out usually no earlier than a week ahead of time, so Fomdi might show a movie coming up in two or three days at the longest stretch. Fomdi is better for finding what you want to see today or tomorrow, but not great for finding out what's showing several days or weeks in the future.
The procedure one person uses is to check out MoPix for closed captioned upcoming movies and InSight Cinema for open captioned upcoming movies (which are usually known weeks ahead of time), then a day or two before they are supposed to show, checks out Fomdi to confirm and find the actual times.
In addition to the above organizations’ websites, some of the theatre chains maintain their own web pages listing their forthcoming captioned movies. For example, AMC Theatres shows their upcoming captioned movies on their captioned movies page at http://www.moviewatcher.com/jsp/amg.jsp while Regal Entertainment lists their upcoming captioned movies at http://www.regalcinemas.com/movies/open_cap.html.
Now that you know how to find captioned movies, go and enjoy one near you.
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Here is a brief overview of three current technologies to help hard of hearing people and people with visual difficulties enjoy movies and live theatre. (I’ve included Descriptive Video Service since a number of hard of hearing people also have visual difficulties.)
Open Captioning (OC) is where the captions are visible on the screen for all to read. You do not need any assistive technology to view these captions.
Rear Window Captioning (RWC) is a type of closed captioning (CC), because only the people with special transparent acrylic panels can see the captions. (In case you are interested, RWC displays reversed captions on a light-emitting diode (LED) text display which is mounted at the rear of a theatre. You adjust your panel, which is attached to your seat, to reflect the captions so that they appear superimposed on the movie screen. These reflective panels are portable and adjustable, so you can sit almost anywhere you want in the theatre.)
Descriptive Video Service (DVS) describes what is happening, which you hear via an infrared or FM receiver. (This is sometimes referred to as Descriptive Audio (DA), or Descriptive Video (DV), but it is all the same thing.) DVS enables moviegoers with visual problems to hear the descriptive narration on headsets without disturbing people nearby. DVS describes key visual elements such as actions, settings, and scene changes to help make movies more meaningful to people with vision loss.