Final Regulatory Assessment and Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Final Rule - Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations - Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description

The purpose of the RA is to capture the incremental costs of the rulemaking.  As a result, the Final RA only includes the costs that movie theaters will incur as a direct result of this rulemaking.  The analysis assumes that movie theaters with auditoriums currently equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description would also operate and maintain this equipment in the absence of this rule.  The costs associated with providing closed movie captioning and audio description in such auditoriums are not included in the analysis unless specifically noted (see Section 2.4.2) because these relevant movie theaters acquired the necessary equipment prior to the rulemaking.  Therefore, the costs incurred by these theaters are not a direct result of the rulemaking.

To estimate the incremental cost impact, the total costs are measured against a baseline.  The baseline represents the Department’s best assessment of the state of the movie exhibition industry.  The baseline is the estimated number of movie theater auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description, and the number of captioning and audio description devices already available for patrons in those auditoriums.  In this way, the resulting net costs appropriately reflect the incremental economic impact of the final rule. 

There is uncertainty regarding the number of auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning and audio description and the extent to which movie theaters would offer closed movie captioning and audio description if the Department had not undertaken this rulemaking process.  Therefore, the Final RA estimates costs against three different baseline scenarios, which are described in greater detail in Section 3.2.