The Law Offices of Gordon P. Firemark: "If you produce or operate a venue that houses Movies, concerts, or performing arts works, like theatre, comedy or spoken word performances, you may not be aware of the scope of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires that you make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.
Sure, we’ve all made entryways wider, installed ramps, and configured seating to allow for patrons in wheelchairs. But what about those patrons with less obvious disabilities, such as deafness and blindness?
6 comments:
I think its great that the ADA is concerned with individual's disabilities and viewing theatre, but it could cause significant amount of issues. Providing basic aids for people with disabilities, specifically seating and ramps as a start is good, hearing devices would be the next best solution. I agree with the individuals in the article that feel closed or open captioning or a live sign language interpreter would pull the audience away from the production. To me the ADA should realize that hearing devices where individual theatres cannot afford closed captioning should be suitable.
After talking with Mallory last year about disability in theatre, I really appreciate the fact that the hearing- and vision-impaired patrons are pushing for recognition and assistance from theatres. However, the solutions to these problems are not very elegant in accommodating these patrons while not disturbing the others. I've worked in a rear-window captioning theatre before, and even thought it's highly appreciated by hearing-impaired patrons, the article has a real point about the spill of light from the display screen. I agree with AJ that the hearing devices are the best solution for now, but I wonder if mobile technology could be harnessed to work here - could a very low-brightness iPhone screen displaying captions be a viable solution? Or maybe a Kindle-type e-ink device that produces no natural light itself?
I take part of that back - the hearing devices are fairly elegant, though for many patrons it simply amplifies the action on stage, rather than making the sound cleaner and crisper for understanding. Perhaps a new line of hearing devices could include independent high/mid/low controls - that would allow the patron to set what they need to have assistance hearing, and would clean up the sound for better comprehension.
This never crossed my mind that this could be a rising issue. I think that close captioning as mentioned in the article would created a significant burden on the producing company. That would require collecting the text of the show and having someone operate it during the show not to mention the cost of purchasing a system capable of delivering this captioning to its patrons. Signers or open captioning can be very distracting to other theatre patrons, not that I am against it because everyone should be able to enjoy a performance but I always get sidetracked and start watching the captioning or signers when I am at a production.
Everyone is saying that listening devices are a possible solution for accommodating people with hearing disabilities, but those systems will only work for people who are HARD-of-hearing, not completely deaf. There is a discussion on the Stagecraft mailing list right now about a deaf person demanding that a venue provide an ASL interpreter for a rock concert. There are very mixed feelings about this, and most people agree that this is an unreasonable burden. That may be true, but we all need to think about what we can do to accommodate those who really need something more than assisted-listening. There's probably not a good answer, but we should at least try.
I am all for included all of our citizens in our art form, and some accommodations are definitely useful. But there is such thing as "too much." The cost can get prohibitive, it can create additional problems that degrade the artistic intent, or the experience for other patrons. But maybe it's not the end of the world. Disabled persons can't do everything else that abled people can. Sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles. You wouldn't expect a wheel-chair bound person to be an underwater welder, would you? So should we have CC or ASL signer at all performances?
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