Final Regulatory Assessment and Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Final Rule - Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations - Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description

The Department has decided to defer until a later date the decision whether to engage in rulemaking with respect to movie theater auditoriums that exhibit analog movies exclusively.  The Department’s research indicates that very few analog movie theaters remain, and that the number of such movie theaters has declined rapidly in recent years due, in large part, to the movie industry’s conversion to digital cinema.  The Department believes that it is prudent to delay further rulemaking with regard to analog movie theaters until it is clear whether, for example, there will be any movie theaters in the future that continue to show analog movies exclusively, whether analog movies will continue to be produced, and, if so, whether they will be produced or distributed with captioning and audio description.  As a result of this decision, the primary analysis of the Final RA does not assess the costs to provide captioning and audio description for analog auditoriums.