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

In the Final RA, the baseline is defined as the current number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description.  As explained in Section 2.1.3, any auditoriums that are already equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description prior to the rulemaking are not included in the cost estimation.

Until recently, few movie theaters actually provided auxiliary aids and services for movie patrons who are deaf or hard of hearing, or blind or have low vision, despite the increasing availability of movies produced with captions and audio description.  The Department recognizes that this has started to change.  The industry as a whole is seeing an increasing number of movie theaters with auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description.

However, there is uncertainty regarding the precise number of auditoriums equipped to provide these services. Because this estimate has a significant impact on the cost estimation of the final rule, the Final RA estimates costs against three different baselines.  A Medium Accessibility baseline is used in the primary analysis, and Low Accessibility and High Accessibility baselines are used in sensitivity analyses.  The three baselines are derived from the 2015 Accessibility Survey conducted by NATO.¹⁸ 

Section 3.2.1 provides an overview and presents the results of the 2015 NATO Accessibility Survey.  Section 3.2.2 explains that the results of the survey are not definitive and demonstrates the need for analyzing multiple baselines.  This section also provides an overview of how the Low Accessibility, Medium Accessibility, and High Accessibility baselines are calculated.  Section 3.2.3 shows how the number of auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description is distributed across the venue types in the primary analysis.

NATO is a trade association representing firms in the movie exhibition industry.  In 2015, NATO members in the United States operated approximately 32,499 of the 39,338 indoor movie auditoriums nationwide (82.6 percent).  In response to the 2014 NPRM, NATO conducted a survey (2015 survey) of its member companies regarding the number of auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description.¹⁹  NATO members responded via email during the spring and summer of 2015, providing information on the total number of auditoriums they operated and the proportion of those auditoriums that were equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.

NATO received survey responses from 116 companies operating 24,739 auditoriums in the United States.  A quick overview of the 2015 survey results is provided in Table 3-7 below.  According to the 2015 survey, 22,836 auditoriums are equipped to provide closed movie captioning and 22,673 auditoriums are equipped to provide audio description.

The 2015 survey is representative of a portion of the total number of auditoriums operating in the United States.  The Final RA uses three possible baselines (Low Accessibility, Medium Accessibility, and High Accessibility) that differ depending on the assumptions concerning the prevalence of auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst movie theaters that were not surveyed or that failed to respond to the 2015 survey.  The primary analysis uses the Medium Accessibility baseline while the Low Accessibility and High Accessibility baselines are estimated separately as sensitivity analyses in Sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2.  The assumptions used to calculate the baselines are outlined in the sections below.

The Low Accessibility baseline is the most conservative of the three baselines developed for the cost estimation.  The Low Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description as reported in the 2015 survey are the only indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States that are equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.

The calculation for the Low Accessibility baseline is presented in Table 3-8.  The Low Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey (Table 3-7), by the total number of indoor auditoriums operating in the United States (Table 3-1 in Section 3.1.1).

The Medium Accessibility baseline is used in the cost estimation for the primary analysis presented in Section 4.1.  The Medium Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by all NATO members is true for all indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States.

As previously discussed in Section 3.2.1, NATO member companies operate approximately 32,499 auditoriums.  The Medium Accessibility baseline assumes that the percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by NATO members is true for the entire industry.  This differs from the Low Accessibility baseline, which assumes that no auditoriums outside of those included in the 2015 survey are equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.  The Medium Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey, by the total number of auditoriums operated by NATO members, as shown in Table 3-9.

The High Accessibility baseline is the least conservative of the three baselines.  The High Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by surveyed NATO members is true for all indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States.

As shown in Table 3-7, the NATO members responding to the survey operated 24,739 auditoriums.  The High Accessibility baseline assumes that the percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst the total number of auditoriums operated by firms responding to the 2015 survey is true for the entire industry.  The High Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the total number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey, by the total number of auditoriums operated by the 2015 survey respondents, as shown in Table 3-10.

The Low Accessibility, Medium Accessibility, and High Accessibility baselines are summarized in Table 3-11.  The primary analysis uses the Medium Accessibility baseline in the calculation of the estimated costs.  In the Medium Accessibility baseline, approximately 70 percent of auditoriums are equipped to provide closed movie captioning and approximately 70 percent are equipped to provide audio description.  The costs of the final rule using the Low Accessibility and High Accessibility baselines are estimated as sensitivity analyses in Sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2, respectively.

Table 3-12 : Medium Accessibility Baseline by Venue Type–Captioning and Audio Description

The Medium Accessibility baseline percentage by venue type above is then applied to the number of indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the compliance year, presented in Table 3-9.  Table 3-13 below shows the calculation used to determine the Department’s assumption regarding the number of auditoriums subject to the rulemaking that are and are not equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.  As the table shows, the Department assumes that 9,561 of the auditoriums at Megaplex movie theaters are equipped to provide closed movie captioning, while 3,778 are assumed to not be equipped to provide closed movie captioning.

Table 3-13 : Calculation of Auditoriums That Are Equipped to Provide Captioning by Venue Type

*Percentage of all auditoriums equipped to provide captioning

The same methodology is used to calculate the number of auditoriums subject to the rulemaking that are and are not equipped to provide audio description.

Table 3-14: Calculation of Auditoriums That Are Equipped to Provide Audio Description by Venue Type

*Percentage of all auditoriums equipped to provide audio description

As shown in Section 2.3.1 and Section 2.3.2, the number of indoor digital auditoriums that are and are not equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description in the compliance year provides the basis of estimating how many units of equipment will be purchased as a result of the rulemaking.