Has the power of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) gone to far with this ruling

[Nathreim]

Id appeal this horse shit.

[Nefarious Tea]

The movie theatre can't even provide a braille transcript, because then the studio would sue for copyright infringement.

[Mistame]

What gear are you talking about? He needs a person to tranlate the movie for him. A person. According to http://www.linksinterpreting.com/pages/Rates.html they cost $99 per hour. That makes his trip to the movies over 300 bucks.

Yeah, so why should the movie theater have to shell out $300 for a $20-30 ticket?

[zoefschildpad]

And how would he know that the theater didn't just stick him a broom closet for a couple hours? They could have a dipping bird tap his hand every so often to tell him about the exciting parts.

He can feel the sound, smell the popcorn and sense the emotion of his interpreter. And tactile sign needs complex patterns. I doubt developing robotics for it is cheaper, and the inability to communicate back would make it a worse experience for the moviegoer too.

[gaymer77]

I'm all for business being accountable to give people reasonable accommodations if they are disabled but this is not reasonable. This is insane that this happened. A movie is all about seeing and hearing what is going on. There is music to toy with your emotions and visuals to take you to another place. If you're blind AND deaf, it makes absolutely no sense to go to a movie.

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I'm sorry @zoefschildpad but you're dead wrong on your stance on this topic. Offering on-demand interrupters for a blind & deaf person is an extremely costly expense for ANY business owner. It is not a reasonable thing to ask for ANY business to have.

[Halicia]

I think Penn & Teller did an episode on this sort of thing, like patent trolling, where people generally target smaller businesses that can't afford the lawyer fees to begin with, so are willing to settle... one guy carpeted a whole town with these bogus lawsuits, but enough had to settle and made it worth the gimmick.

[ItsRainingMetal]

A blind and deaf person.. Wants to see/goto a movie?

wat.. And the judges voted in favor!

[Barnabas]

Whats next? Do porn companies need to provide an interpreter for these people also for watching adult films online? Slippery slope laws like this are dangerous and just make things worse.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Yeah, this is not "reasonable accommodation".

The problem is not with the ADA though....it's with decision from the appeal court. The first court got it right.

[zoefschildpad]

I'm all for business being accountable to give people reasonable accommodations if they are disabled but this is not reasonable. This is insane that this happened. A movie is all about seeing and hearing what is going on. There is music to toy with your emotions and visuals to take you to another place. If you're blind AND deaf, it makes absolutely no sense to go to a movie.

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I'm sorry @zoefschildpad but you're dead wrong on your stance on this topic. Offering on-demand interrupters for a blind & deaf person is an extremely costly expense for ANY business owner. It is not a reasonable thing to ask for ANY business to have.

My point isn't that the theater should pay for it, I'd be perfectly fine with it if some organization or government program did. I just think that he and others like him should be able to enjoy a movie every once in a while. That doesn't at all seem like an unreasonable request to me. Having a movie inerpreted to you is a very different experience from reading a book.

[Collegeguy]

Just raise his ticket price by $500 to include an interpreting fee. Still not sure how anyone expects movie theaters to have interpreters on call 24/7.

My guess is that movie studios worldwide would have to foot the bill in providing technology that would make this remotely realistic.

[Deletedaccount1]

This reminds me of when UC Berkeley needed to take down all of their online lectures because deaf people were complaining that they didn't have closed captions and violated the ADA as a result.

[shadowmouse]

Many of those posting in this thread might benefit from 1) reading the linked case, and 2) remembering that this case takes place in a particular legal setting.

About the plaintiff and watching movies:

McGann has experienced movies in theaters for many years. He enjoys attending movies in person for a number of reasons;  among others, it affords him the opportunity to participate in discussions about the movies with his friends and family. Before his wife passed away in 2001, she would provide him with tactile interpretation during movies in the theater. Since then, McGann has attended movies at a local Carmike Cinema. Carmike provided him with tactile interpretation services for movie presentations at his request.

In November 2014, McGann became interested in experiencing the movie Gone Girl (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. 2014), after hearing about it from his family and reading about it online using Braille. After he contacted his customary Carmike Cinema to inquire about attending a presentation of the movie, he learned it was no longer playing there. So he sought another theater in which to experience it.

Cinemark owned another theater in McGann's local area, Cinemark Robinson Township and XD Theater (“Cinemark Robinson”). As of December 2014, Cinemark was the most geographically diverse, worldwide exhibitor of movies, with 335 theaters and 4,499 movie screens in the United States, spread across forty-one states, including Pennsylvania. Cinemark makes assistive listening devices, closed captioning devices, and descriptive narration devices available in its U.S. theaters to patrons who are disabled. But given McGann's disability, none of those devices would help him experience a movie.

Having learned that Cinemark Robinson still offered Gone Girl, McGann e-mailed the theater directly to request tactile interpretation services that would allow him to experience the movie during one of its regular presentations. After receiving no response to his initial inquiry, McGann contacted Cinemark Robinson again and was directed to senior paralegal Leslie Petengill, who worked in Cinemark's national headquarters in Texas. He reached out to Petengill that same day.

tl;dr Movies are something that he goes to to talk about with family and friends. He has a regular place that he goes, and they provide a tactile interpreter. In this case, the movie was at a different chain, not a small one, and that chain does provide other disabled users suitable help. That tactile interpreting might be too expensive is an available defense. The trial court didn't reach that defense, they used a flawed interpretation based on a dictionary. The case in this article basically points out the flaws and sends the case back to trial to address whether it is too expensive. Not really a big deal. Once again, too expensive is specifically an available defense, making the whole article as quoted in OP moot.

Here's the relevant part:

Cinemark also asserted an undue burden defense. However, the District Court did not reach it, as it entered Judgment in favor of Cinemark on other grounds. DOJ regulations instruct that “undue burden” under Title III “means significant difficulty or expense.” 28 C.F.R. § 36.104. The regulations also provide a lengthy list of factors for courts and public accommodations to consider when evaluating whether taking a particular action, such as providing a requested auxiliary aid or service, would result in an undue burden. These factors include:

(1) The nature and cost of the action needed under this part;

(2) The overall financial resources of the site or sites involved in the action;  the number of persons employed at the site;  the effect on expenses and resources;  legitimate safety requirements that are necessary for safe operation, including crime prevention measures;  or the impact otherwise of the action upon the operation of the site;

(3) The geographic separateness, and the administrative or fiscal relationship of the site or sites in question to any parent corporation or entity;

(4) If applicable, the overall financial resources of any parent corporation or entity;  the overall size of the parent corporation or entity with respect to the number of its employees;  the number, type, and location of its facilities;  and

(5) If applicable, the type of operation or operations of any parent corporation or entity, including the composition, structure, and functions of the workforce of the parent corporation or entity.

Id. Given the fact-intensive nature of the undue burden inquiry, we will remand this portion of the District Court's judgment for the District Court to undertake the inquiry in the first instance.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we will vacate the District Court's entry of Judgment for the Defendant and remand the case for consideration of Cinemark's undue burden defense.

Source: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-3rd-circuit/1876823.html emphasis added

Findlaw is easier to quote than the article's link since it isn't pdf.

[Mosotti]

Felipe is a fucking imbecile.

[gaymer77]

My point isn't that the theater should pay for it, I'd be perfectly fine with it if some organization or government program did. I just think that he and others like him should be able to enjoy a movie every once in a while. That doesn't at all seem like an unreasonable request to me. Having a movie inerpreted to you is a very different experience from reading a book.

Why would some organization or the government have to foot the bill for EVERY business someone with an extremely low rate of disability? How can you argue the cost to the government and/or organizations is REASONABLE to accommodate a fraction of a percent of people in the nation? The town I live in has 9 movie theaters. Are you trying to say that all 9 of them should be required to have on-call a tactical interrupter that charges $100 an hour just in case someone who can neither see nor hear gets a wild hair up their ass and wants to go to a movie where he will neither hear not see anything going on? Let's just assume for a moment that they do accommodate a blind/deaf person. What happens if someone else who is blind and deaf shows up? Would the government and/or some organization be required to fork out yet ANOTHER $100 an hour to someone else to be a tactical interrupter? Assuming the average movie is about 2-2 1/2 hours long, that's $200-300 PER PERSON the government and/or organization is having to fork out. And that is REASONABLE in your books?

[s_bushido]

While I have to roll my eyes at idiots like the person who wrote that opinion piece, since they obviously have an axe to grind, requiring a theater to provide an interpreter to someone who is blind and deaf seems extreme. I could understand going to a movie if you're either blind or deaf, but at what point do you consider that maybe this form of entertainment just isn't for me?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Basically, a blind and deaf person figures out whats going on by holding the hand of a seeing person and that person will finger spell out what's going on. That's what a tactile interpreter is. That sounds like a HORRIBLE way to see a movie.

I think it's even a different system. I wonder if they also have hundrets of dialects like normal sign language.. do they have to keep one on stuff that can do them all? What if more than one person needs one? Lol.

[DrMcNinja]

People who abuse their disabilities for their own benefit are no better than people consumed by corporate greed.

[GreenJesus]

This is complete bullshit. I hope he loses his sense of taste, touch, and smell too. Fuck that guy.

[Jinpachi]

What gear are you talking about? He needs a person to tranlate the movie for him. A person. According to http://www.linksinterpreting.com/pages/Rates.html they cost $99 per hour. That makes his trip to the movies over 300 bucks.

It's not a reasonable expectation to have a specialized interpreter to accommodate someone who is both blind AND deaf. they have CC for the deaf and the blind can already hear what's going on.