From:	Barry Napthine 
Sent:	Thursday, 26 November 2009 3:35 PM
To:	disabdis
Subject:	Submission

Michael Small  
Director Disability Rights Policy  
Australian Human Rights Commission

Thursday 26th November 2009

Dear Mr Small,
I wish to state my objection to the application made by Village Roadshow, Greater Union, Hoyts and 
Reading Cinemas requesting exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act for a period of two 
and a half years.

If the exemption is granted, it will mean that Australians who are Deaf, hard of hearing, legally blind 
and vision impaired, including older Australians, stand to lose their right to complain to the Human 
Rights Commission about the lack of provision of captioning and audio description services at ANY 
of the 125 cinemas (1182 screens) owned by these four exhibitors.

Further, cinemas will provide captioning and audio description for a minimum of three (3) 
screenings in 35 cinemas around Australia.
Let’s put that into perspective:
?  Jointly, these exhibitors have 1,182 screens across Australia. 
?  I understand that they show approximately 30 movies per screen every week. 
?  That’s a total of 41,370 screenings per week (1182 screens x 5 sessions per day x 7 days) 
?  Of these, only 105 will be captioned and audio described. This is equal to less than 0.3% of all 
movies screened per week. 
?  At this pace, it will take 1000 years to achieve universal access, that is, access to all screenings in 
all cinemas. 

As a visually impaired person, I strongly submit that the exemption should be denied.


Barry Napthine

Woodend, Vic, 3442