On February 4, 2025 a companion bill for open captions was introduced in the New York State Assembly: NY Assembly Bill 4628. Introduced by New York State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright.
What can YOU do?
If you live in New York State, call/email your New York State Assembly Member and ask him/her to support this bill. If you don’t know who your New York Assembly Member is, use the Find Your Assembly member search below. If you have family or friends in New York State, tell them about this bill and ask them to reach out to their New York State Assembly Member to request that they support this bill. And there will soon be a video posted about this bill - watch for it!
Find your Assembly Member
Who is my Assembly member? If you live in New York but have no idea who represents you in the New York State Assembly, use this link:
https://nyassembly.gov/mem/search/
Actual bill:
Legiscan: https://legiscan.com/NY/bill/A04628/2025
NY State Assembly: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A4628
What else can you do?
If you know people in New York state, send them the link to the Caption Action 3 petition: change.org/ocmoviesnow. We need more people from New York state signing this petition to make the New York State open caption bills move! We also need more from Washington state, because Washington state also has a bill! Growing numbers of signatures prove to legislators that there is support for open captions.
Extra! Extra!
On February 5, Gothamist, a New York City-focused publication, published an article about New York City movie theaters and open captions:
“Why do New York City movie theaters have captions now?”
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/why-do-new-york-city-movie-theaters-have-captions-now
What does this bill do? (Skip if you already read the Senate bill update)
The bill applies to movie theaters that have more than 10 screenings a week.
If a movie has four or more screenings per week, at least 25% of those four or more screenings must have open captions. Theaters are not required to have more than four screenings of a movie in a week; theaters may voluntarily offer more than four.
Peak times means: between 5:59 pm and 11:01 pm on Friday or between 11:29 am and 11:01 pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
Peak times requirements: Fifty percent must be during the Peak days/times. This most likely applies early in a movie's run, generally the first two weeks. The fifty percent requirement does not apply if there are say, eight screenings of the movie but none of them are peak time (this is usually the case later in a movie's run). But if any of them are peak time, all the peak time screenings must have open captions.
Non-peak time requirements: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are not peak attendance days. On those days, fifty percent of open caption screenings must be between 6:00 pm and 11:00 pm. The fifty percent requirement does not apply if there are say, eight screenings of the movie but none of them are peak time (this is usually the case later in a movie's run). But if any of them are peak time, all the peak time screenings must have open captions.
Also, theaters can not "double-book," meaning schedule open caption screenings such that they are overlapping with each other. For example, there can't be a 5:00 pm OC screening of one movie and a 5:15 pm OC screening of another movie. If they overlap, they won't count towards the minimum requirement. The exception is if it is simply not possible to avoid overlapping.
Of course, theaters are free to offer more than the minimum required.
Violation of the law carries a penalty of up to $500 per violation.
Who Benefits?
Who in New York could benefit from this bill for open captions in New York State movie theaters?
- Deaf/hard of hearing
- Autism (Neurodivergent)
- Auditory Processing Disorder
- Attention Deficit Disorder
- Aphasia
- Dyslexia
- Kids learning to read
- Adults learning English as a second language
- Noise sensitive
- Many people just like or prefer captions