Background and international comparisons

Background to accessible movies in Australia

Captioned cinema access is well-established in the English-speaking world and has been in Australia since 2001. 

Cinema captioning was established as a result of an Australian Human Rights Commission brokered agreement.  This covered eight locations initially and has expanded to 12 at present.  The locations can be found on this page.  Each of these locations shows 3 captioned sessions per week: Wednesday morning at 10.00am; Friday evening at 6.30pm and Sunday afternoon at 3.30pm.  These times vary slightly due to programming and local sessions times.

Hoyts, Village, Greater Union and Birch Carroll & Coyle cinemas provide captioned sessions only, although most of the captioned movies shown have been audio described as well, but these cinemas have not chosen to provide this service yet.

Audio description in Australia has been introduced into 12 independent cinemas in 2009 through a program funded by the Department of Health and Ageing.  This program is the result of discussions between the Department, the Independent Cinemas Association of Australia and Media Access Australia.  

International access comparisons

Fair comparison of access levels to other countries should take into account the number of screens and geographic distribution of cinemas to reach the population.   The USA has the biggest cinemas with an average of 7 screens per cinema.  Australia has 4 screens on average (ie a higher proportion of single-screen cinemas) and is closer to the UK and NZ average of 5 screens per cinema.

In mid-2007 the USA had over 830 accessible cinemas, representing about 15% of locations and an accessible cinema for every 357,000 people.  The UK had over 250 cinemas, representing nearly 38% of locations and an accessible cinema for every 243,000 people.  NZ had 3 accessible cinemas (captions only), representing 3% of locations and an accessible cinema for every 1.4 million people. 

United Kingdom

There are over 250 cinemas in the United Kingdom that use the DTS and Dolby access systems. These screen around ten thousand audio described sessions every month. Over one hundred and fifty first-release movies are audio described and captioned each year in the United Kingdom and shown at locations across the country every night of the week.

Your Local Cinema has a list of audio described movies, cinemas, session times, links, samples of audio description trailers and excerpts from the movies themselves. It also provides information on captioned cinema, as both audio description and captioning have been well implemented in the United Kingdom as remedies to general access issues.

North America

America and Canada have over five hundred accessible cinemas and use a variety of systems, including DTS, Dolby ScreenTalk and Rear Window. America is unique in that it has a number of cinemas with multiple screens that are accessible.

There are also a number of Imax cinemas that are accessible.

Screen Australia captioning policy

From 1 July 2007 all Australian feature movies financed by Screen Australia must be captioned.  This is part of Screen Australia's funding agreements for feature films; funding agreement guidelines are reviewed yearly and this is current until the end of the 2008/2009 financial year.  These features are made available to international markets with captions.