ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A new push is underway to bring open captions to movie theaters across New York State. While subtitles or captions are common when watching movies at home, they are rarely available in public theaters, which poses a challenge for the deaf or hard-of-hearing community.

News10NBC’s Hailie Higgins spoke with advocates working to change this. A bill proposed in the state legislature would require most movie theaters to offer some showings of each film with open captions. Open captions are similar to subtitles seen at home, displaying dialogue, music, laughter, and relevant background noise on the screen.

Currently, theaters provide closed captioning devices, which have been mandatory for about 15 years. Closed captioning devices display text on a small screen that fits into cupholders, while the movie plays on the big screen. However, many people find these devices unsanitary, prone to malfunction, and inconvenient, distracting from the movie-going experience.

Jerry Bergman, chairman of the Hearing Loss Association of New York State, emphasized the importance of equal access.

“The spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act is that people with disabilities are entitled to as near equal an experience as able-bodied people, and we’re not treated fairly right now by the movie theaters,” Bergman said.

Maryland and Hawaii have already enacted similar laws, and New York City has been implementing open captions since 2022.

The Little Theatre on East Avenue has been offering open captioning since 2018. According to the team there, it has been a successful addition. Open captions are generally the preferred method for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to enjoy films, as they provide an experience similar to that of hearing viewers.

A proposed bill aims to require New York movie theaters to offer a few captioned screenings each week. Theaters already possess the necessary captioned files, as deaf advocates secured this capability years ago. Employees simply need to activate the feature.

Theater owners have argued that most viewers do not want captions, fearing it will hurt sales. Advocates claim this is a myth, as demonstrated by the success at The Little Theatre.

“Especially here in Rochester, we know there is a huge audience for that, and we want everyone to come see our movies and see what we offer. We offer a lot of educational films. A lot of stuff that has important conversations for this community, so we want everyone to come be a part of that. So that’s why that accessibility is so important,” said Scott Pukos, Director of Communications at The Little Theatre.

Jerry Bergman, Chairman of the Hearing Loss Association of New York State, is collaborating with RIT’s National Technical Institute of the Deaf to create a YouTube video. They aim to gather stories from people across the state to show how all voters, hearing or not, support open captioning. You can email jerbergman1 [AT] me.com to participate in the video or view the petition here.

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