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Cinemas, Theatres and Sensory Disabilities

11/12/2013

2 Comments

 
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The current state of the relevant legislation does recognise the needs of people with disabilities within buildings such as auditoriums and cinemas. The inclusions to assist people with disabilities have however been somewhat limited in their scope.

Requirements for the provision of wheelchair seating spaces and accessible paths of travel to these, as well as the provision of a Hearing Augmentation Listening Systems (HALS) to assist people with hearing impairments have been present in the Building Code of Australia for some time – not without their challenges however.

The need to provide wheelchair seating which is representative of the overall range of seating available in cinemas which are traditionally tiered to optimise sight lines for able bodied patrons, can be difficult to achieve when appropriate consideration has not been attributed to this issue early on in the planning phase.

Issues such as maintenance and checking, battery charging of components and staff knowledge in the support of HALS mean these systems often fail operationally in their support of people with hearing impairments over the life of theatre or cinema. Other issues such as stigma associated with equipment which is worn by a patron as well as the fact that amplification alone does not meet the needs of all people with hearing impairments further highlights the issues facing the current state of play.

There are also a number of omissions from the current requirements which can extend the services offered within these buildings to a broader range of people. Technologies such as audio description can allow a person with a visual impairment to participate in the cinematic and theatrical experience. Captioning can provide a fail-safe access method for people with more significant hearing impairments.

Previously these technologies required additional equipment for their implementation and the captioning and description services were often simply not produced for a substantial number of cinema releases and major entertainment productions. This area has however quickly evolved in recent years, and continues to evolve making the uptake of such services by movie and entertainment providers far easier and cost effective.

The advent and progress of digital technologies now means that captions and audio descriptions can be provided with the same media for cinema releases and played with relatively standard equipment within cinemas.

Additional equipment such as Doremi’s CaptiView ‘closed’ captioning system allow a screen displaying captions to be mounted in the drink holder of a cinema or theatre seat. Relatively mainstream audio receiver and headset equipment can be used to receive and play audio which includes the description components. Standard tablets and mounting equipment have also been used to provide ‘closed’ captioning.

Open captioning involves the display of captions on the cinema screen or on a screen adjacent to the proscenium of a theatre, sometimes within the set of the production itself, allowing everyone within the theatre to view them. Many users prefer open captioning and sessions are sometimes scheduled at select cinemas and theatres offering this as opposed to closed captioning technologies alone.

Years ago very few theatres offered these services. The advances made in the relevant technologies as well as vocal lobbying by many disability agencies and consumers with disabilities to industry now sees approximately 115 cinemas across Australian provide captioning. What is now a relatively inexpensive investment opens up these services to whole new audience who was previously removed from the experience altogether. 

George Xinos
Functional Access Solutions


2 Comments
Gary
14/1/2014 08:35:26 pm

Could you please clarify the required luminance contrast and the instruments that should be used to comply with code requirements, as within your post, you indivcate it has been reported that some assessors are using instruments that dont meet requirements of standards.

I am a Chartered Surveyor currently in the UK, but have an interest in Disability compliance within Australia and globally.

Would appreciate some additional advice.

Reply
George Xinos
15/1/2014 07:01:34 am

Hi Gary and thanks for your comment.

Our Building Codes in Australia reference AS 1428.1 2009 and AS 1428.4.1 2009 with regard to the issue of luminance contrast in building elements and accessibility. Each of these standards provide an Appendix that outlines the instrumentation and methodology necessary to assess luminance contrast.

The trouble with what is happening on a practical note is two fold. One is that two separate methodologies our outlined to assess luminance contrast - one is a 'laboratory' situation which I take to mean with material samples during the design process; and the other 'on-site'. Different types of instrumentation are required for each of these.

My understanding is however, that some organizations are offering assessment services (mainly suppliers of Tactile Ground Surface Indicators) but are using instruments only applicable to 'laboratory' situations across both applications.

The other main issue is the instrument itself. According to these standards the instrument intended for 'laboratory' applications should be:
"A tristimuls colorimeter, or spectrophotometer with a diffuse illumination/normal viewing (d/0) geometry, is used with CIE Standard Illuminant D65. The instrument has to be capable of measuring absolute CIE for Yxy to be calculated...."

The difficulty with the above is the d/0 geometry. I am only aware of one instrument available on the market in Australia capable of this and it is significantly more expensive when compared with other similar instruments offering differing geometries. The result has been that some assessors are using instruments which do not achieve the required geometry.

In conclusion then, these assessments do not comply with the relevant codes here even though some useful information and advice can still be provided.

From a practical perspective, my relatively lay understanding is that the d/0 geometry was selected to better control differences in diffuse reflection from surfaces assessed (e.g. textures which may have differing levels of reflected light in different directions).

Hope this helps. Of course you are welcome to contact me directly at george@functionalaccess.com.au if you would like to discuss further.

Kind regards,
George Xinos
Functional Access Solutions

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