Lawyers filed a class action on behalf of deaf consumers against Hollywood studios that labeled DVDs as closed captioned but failed to note that “bonus material” on the disks lacked captioning. According to the terms of the proposed settlement:
The Settling Companies have denied liability, but have agreed to settle this action to avoid litigation by, in the future, providing captioning or closed captioning of bonus material on major categories of DVDs they distribute over the next five (5) years, paying $275,000 to certain non-profit organizations dedicated to advocacy for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons, and paying attorneys’ fees and costs (including any incentive award to named plaintiff) up to $1,300,000…
More here. Toronto accessibility advocate Joe Clark thinks the settlement doesn’t go far enough, while enriching the lawyers who pursued it.
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Maybe it’s because my inlaws are Deaf, but wouldn’t you be pissed if you bought a DVD only to learn that the bonus material was not in your native language?
And the solution is simple for the DVD manufacturer: “Only the movie is closed captioned.”
Russ Boltz, the plaintiff, has sent me a response I have been slow to upload. I’ll do that today. (I did send it to the Captioning mailing list.)
In response to Ima Fish:
As far as I am aware, no state has recognized a cause of action for being “pissed.” So long as the attitude that righteous indignation is alone sufficient for civil liability pervades our way of thinking, tort reformers in Congress can do little to change a legal environment that encourages lottery litigation.
Yes, placing a statement on the DVD box may have prevented this litigation, but a company cannot foresee every little thing about its product that may cause one of millions of purchasers to be “pissed.” Safety warnings are one thing, but to place a duty on a manufacturer to “warn” of the dangers of annoyance or slight inconvenience is preposterous.
Brian P., accessibility is a legal issue, not a question of annoyance or slight inconvenience. Unquestionably the ADA and similar laws did not apply to film producers, but it is excessive and dismissive to claim that the rights of people with disabilities boil down to annoyance or inconvenience.
The studios elected to settle the lawsuit, and, while the accessibility benefit is rather small compared to what it could be, it is an actual accessibility benefit and is not a reduction of annoyance or inconvenience.
Joe, I did not claim that lack of accessibility in general can always be boiled down to annoyance or slight inconvenience, but rather that in this particular case it can. Of course there are a myriad of situations in which it is altogether reasonable to hold defendants liable for limiting access (wheelchair ramps for vital public facilities comes to mind). I intended to express the opinion that it is overly burdensome to hold a DVD producer to such a high standard when “accessibility” is so broadly defined as to include captioning on DVD extra features, especially given the difficulty in foreseeing every instance or act which could make a product “inaccessible” under that broad definition.