From:	Patrick Vasquez 
Sent:	Friday, 27 November 2009 8:53 AM
To:	disabdis
Subject:	Response to request for exemption

Director Disability Rights Policy
The Human Rights Commission 

Submission regarding the application by 
Hoyts Corporation, Greater Union Organisation, Village Cinemas and Reading Cinemas 
for an Exemption under section 55 of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on this application by this multinational 
corporation which makes healthy profits on a yearly basis.  I strongly object to the 
granting of this exemption as there are not clear hardship grounds for the applicants 
making the request.

I work as a community development worker in a large disability services organisation and 
we have many service participants who are vision impaired, blind, hearing impaired and 
deaf.  Clearly their right to access cinemas like everyone else is not taken into account 
when major corporations can simply ask for exemptions without strong grounds.  This 
application does not comply with the intent of the Federal Government’s National Arts 
and Disability Strategy. 

Across the country at the present time, there are limited and very small numbers of 
cinemas providing captioning to a very limited range of movies.  This tokenistic approach 
to providing access can not be allowed to continue and thereby, allow a major 
corporation to continue to discriminate 

As outlined by Rachael Baker in her submission, “jointly, these exhibitors have 1,182 
screens across Australia. 
•  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”. 

This is what I mean when I strongly state that this approach is totally tokenistic.  It is the 
role of the Human Rights Commission to protect the human rights of people with a 
disability and our increasing ageing population.  

Please reject this application and demand that this conglomerate get serious about 
meeting their obligations under the DDA and provide equitable access for all.

Patrick Vasquez – South West Sydney