At Parkway Pointe, the featured film changes about every month. The theatre has already shown 28 Days, The Green Mile, Random Hearts, Star Wars and most recently, The Patriot starring Mel Gibson. The goal of the National Centre for Accessible Media, however, is to offer visually and hearing-impaired movie fans the choice to see a movie at any time, instead of specific viewing times. Already, Charlie's Angels and 102 Dalmatians are expected to feature rear-window captioning when those films are released in the autumn. Rear-window captions display almost every word of dialogue in The Patriot, including certain sound effects, such as groans and horse whinnies.
Blind moviegoers get a special headset to listen to a description of the visual elements of a film.
The fast-paced narrative, called DVS Theatrical, works in tandem with the dialogue, sneaking into the movie's natural pauses. Martin falls to his knees, his face contorted with pain. General Cinema, a subsidiary of Massachusetts-based GC Companies, has been the only theatre chain thus far to test the equipment. But some activists are pressuring other national theatre chains to use the technology. Eight people with hearing impairments filed suit in Oregon earlier this year to force several movie theatre chains to install rear-window captioning, citing the Americans With Disabilities Act.