From:	Iain Summerlin [
Sent:	Monday, 7 December 2009 7:24 PM
To:	disabdis
Subject:	Disability Discrimination Act

As an audiologist, I am well aware of the difficulty experienced by my patients, even with hearing aids, 
when at the cinema. All too often they complain that the sound is too loud, the music too prominent 
and the general background noise drowns out the dialogue. The hearing impaired miss out so much 
already and many of my patients have stopped going to the cinema because of the difficulty hearing. 
Assistive devices such as Loop Systems and Infra-Red pickups will be  helpful but words are the 
clearest way of ‘hearing’ those difficult to hear asides that form such a major part of all of our general 
conversations and will inevitably set the scene of a film.

I am thus opposed to the consideration of an exemption for cinemas from the Disability Act relating to 
captioning. If more films were captioned and this was brought to the attention of the hearing impaired 
community, there would be more members of this group attending the cinema.

Iain Summerlin