Oct 9, 2017 3 min read

The laws and accommodations that Americans have made over the years to citizens with disabilities has helped make this country a better, more humane place and helped bring those who deal with disabilities into the places where we shop, work and relax. For at least the last 50 years, we have come to recognize that individuals who deal with disabilities should not be left in the shadows.

However, we question a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals last week that the Cinemark theater chain violated the rights of a patron who is deaf and blind by failing to provide him with tactile interpreters at a movie screening.

Paul McGann, who was born deaf and has progressively been losing his vision since the age of 5, requested a tactile interpreter at a screening of the movie “Gone Girl” at a Pittsburgh-area Cinemark theater in 2014, but the theater declined, after finding that the two interpreters it would have needed to fulfill McGann’s request would have cost $50 to $65 per hour.

With a running time of 150 minutes, and assuming the interpreters would have charged the top rate, it would have cost the theater about $320 to accommodate McGann at that screening – vastly beyond the cost of even a $10 ticket.

A district judge initially found the theater chain did not have to meet McGann’s request, because the judge found that theater chains did not have to offer special services for patrons under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

However, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia disagreed, saying that “auxilary aids and services” for moviegoers with vision and hearing difficulties are part and parcel of the law.

The appeals court did, however, leave the door open for the possibility that the Texas-based theater chain could argue that providing interpreters would pose an “undue burden” on its business because of the costs involved.

The suit was filed for McGann by the group Disability Rights Pennsylvania.

Its managing attorney, Carol A. Horowitz, told the Associated Press last week, “It would be impossible for a deaf-blind person to experience the movie and understand the content without the provision of tactile interpretation.”

While we don’t begrudge McGann his right to enjoy movies, we think the “undue burden” argument would be compelling and convincing.

Sure, executives with the Cinemark chain, the third-largest in the country, are not soon going to be rattling a tin cup on a street corner, with it taking in a little more than $250 million in 2016.

But what if smaller, independently owned movie theaters or chains had to make similar accommodations as a result?

Being mandated to provide something as pricey as tactile interpreters, particularly if it had to be done on a frequent basis, could make it impossible to break even.

There is undeniably something special about going to a movie theater, smelling the popcorn and seeing a film with other viewers.

And that’s even with a bottomless selection of movies available in our homes or on mobile devices thanks to cable, DVDs and streaming services like Netflix.

But there must be some other better, more practical way for McGann and others like him to partake of that experience.