In 2012, AMC Theaters operated 41 theaters in Illinois, with a total of 460 movie theater screens, few if any of which were fully accessible to patrons who were blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard-of-hearing because they lacked captioning and visual description technology. At the time, AMC was ...
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In 2012, AMC Theaters operated 41 theaters in Illinois, with a total of 460 movie theater screens, few if any of which were fully accessible to patrons who were blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard-of-hearing because they lacked captioning and visual description technology. At the time, AMC was in the process of converting all but three of the auditoriums to feature digital projectors.
On April 4, 2012, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced a Settlement Agreement between the Illinois Attorney General and AMC Theaters. In the settlement, AMC did not admit to any liability. The Agreement was the result of a Complaint that disability rights organization Equip for Equality filed with the Disability Rights Bureau of the Office of the Attorney General on behalf of numerous individuals with disabilities, as well as the Hearing Loss Association of America, the Illinois Association of the Deaf, and the Illinois Council of the Blind. Under the Agreement, by April 1, 2014, AMC agreed it would furnish each of the auditoriums it had equipped or would equip with digital projectors with new captioning and audio description technology. AMC agreed to equip all digital auditoriums in any future newly constructed or acquired theaters with the technology as well.
The captioning and audio description systems depend on the presence of corresponding data in the digital file that comprise the movie. AMC agreed that whenever a movie included this data, it would make the captioning and audio description services available to theatergoers. Individual theatergoers requiring the captioning or descriptive technology would each be provided with a device which would present this content to them personally, so that the technology would not disrupt the enjoyment of other patrons.
The settlement excluded any IMAX screens until such time that appropriate technology was made available for them.
AMC agreed to train its employees on the use of the captioning and audio description technology, and to advertise the availability of the technology at specific show times.
Alex Colbert-Taylor - 06/14/2013
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