28 CFR Part 36 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations - Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description Final Rule

“Open Movie Captioning”

The NPRM proposed defining “open movie captioning” as “the provision of the written text of the movie dialogue and other sounds or sound making in an on-screen text format that is seen by everyone in the movie theater.”

While commenters were evenly split on whether the new regulation should use the term “open movie captioning” or “open captioning,” the Department chose the former to avoid confusion and emphasize that the term refers only to captioning provided at movie theaters. The final rule defines “open movie captioning” as “the written on-screen display of a movie's dialogue and non-speech information, such as music, the identity of the character who is speaking, and other sounds and sound effects.”