Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Conference poster abstract (survey and visits to cinemas)

The Experience of Hearing Loss at the Movies

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/young-2025-hearing-loss-at-the-movies/ · record checked 9 October 2026

  • Young S (East Tennessee State University); faculty mentor Hite M
  • Boland Research Day 2025, East Tennessee State University (Digital Commons @ ETSU)

Independent (a doctoral student's poster in ETSU's Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology; funding not stated)

Summary

A student study that checked the websites of 25 cinemas in Southeast Appalachia, contacted 24 of them about their accommodations for hearing loss and visited 14, with preliminary results only.

Key findings

  • Reviewed the websites and social media of 25 cinemas in the Southeast Appalachia region for advertised accommodations; some data could not be obtained for one of them after damage from Hurricane Helene.
  • Contacted the other 24 by phone, email or in person to ask about accommodations and staff knowledge of their use, and at the 14 cinemas visited assessed how well the accommodations performed.
  • Preliminary observations: closed caption devices and personal amplifier devices were the most common accommodations for people with hearing loss, and most cinemas had at least one type of accommodation but inadequate or no advertising or signage for it.
  • Also measured sound levels at the 14 cinemas visited; levels seemed to stay within NIOSH and OSHA values, but the meter detected peaks above them.

Limits

An abstract of a poster presented while analysis was still under way; the poster itself is not available, and the abstract gives no counts, no description of the devices or systems found and no findings on staff knowledge or device performance. One US region; sampling not described. Sound levels were measured with a phone app.

Read the original

dc.etsu.edu/boland-research-day/2025/presentations/272

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

Young S (East Tennessee State University); faculty mentor Hite M. The Experience of Hearing Loss at the Movies. Boland Research Day 2025, East Tennessee State University (Digital Commons @ ETSU). 16 April 2025. https://dc.etsu.edu/boland-research-day/2025/presentations/272 (accessed 9 October 2026).

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