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 2015 survey is representative of a portion of the total number of auditoriums operating in the United States.  The Final RA uses three possible baselines (Low Accessibility, Medium Accessibility, and High Accessibility) that differ depending on the assumptions concerning the prevalence of auditoriums already equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst movie theaters that were not surveyed or that failed to respond to the 2015 survey.  The primary analysis uses the Medium Accessibility baseline while the Low Accessibility and High Accessibility baselines are estimated separately as sensitivity analyses in Sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2.  The assumptions used to calculate the baselines are outlined in the sections below.

The Low Accessibility baseline is the most conservative of the three baselines developed for the cost estimation.  The Low Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description as reported in the 2015 survey are the only indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States that are equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.

The calculation for the Low Accessibility baseline is presented in Table 3-8.  The Low Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey (Table 3-7), by the total number of indoor auditoriums operating in the United States (Table 3-1 in Section 3.1.1).

The Medium Accessibility baseline is used in the cost estimation for the primary analysis presented in Section 4.1.  The Medium Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by all NATO members is true for all indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States.

As previously discussed in Section 3.2.1, NATO member companies operate approximately 32,499 auditoriums.  The Medium Accessibility baseline assumes that the percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by NATO members is true for the entire industry.  This differs from the Low Accessibility baseline, which assumes that no auditoriums outside of those included in the 2015 survey are equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description.  The Medium Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey, by the total number of auditoriums operated by NATO members, as shown in Table 3-9.

The High Accessibility baseline is the least conservative of the three baselines.  The High Accessibility baseline assumes that:

• The percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst auditoriums operated by surveyed NATO members is true for all indoor auditoriums exhibiting digital movies in the United States.

As shown in Table 3-7, the NATO members responding to the survey operated 24,739 auditoriums.  The High Accessibility baseline assumes that the percentage of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description amongst the total number of auditoriums operated by firms responding to the 2015 survey is true for the entire industry.  The High Accessibility baseline is calculated by dividing the total number of auditoriums equipped to provide closed movie captioning or audio description, as reported in the 2015 survey, by the total number of auditoriums operated by the 2015 survey respondents, as shown in Table 3-10.

The Low Accessibility, Medium Accessibility, and High Accessibility baselines are summarized in Table 3-11.  The primary analysis uses the Medium Accessibility baseline in the calculation of the estimated costs.  In the Medium Accessibility baseline, approximately 70 percent of auditoriums are equipped to provide closed movie captioning and approximately 70 percent are equipped to provide audio description.  The costs of the final rule using the Low Accessibility and High Accessibility baselines are estimated as sensitivity analyses in Sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2, respectively.