Accessibility is not a feature, it’s a social imperative, says Senthil Kumar at IFFI

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting made accessibility mandatory at cinema halls. Senthil Kumar of Qube Cinema explained the technicalities at the 55th IFFI.

Panaji: ‘Leaves rustling’, ‘dog barking’, ‘muffled voices’, are some of the descriptions we have come across as a part of subtitles while watching films. These audio captions help people with hearing impairment understand what’s happening in a film better.

Senthil Kumar, co-founder of Qube Cinema discussed ‘The Question of Accessibility’ in cinema halls at the 55th International Film Festival of India. The festival was held between November 20 and 28.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in March issued guidelines for “accessibility standards in the public exhibition of feature films in cinema halls for persons with hearing and visual impairment”.

By March 2026, every cinema hall must develop features to support closed captions (CC), sign languages and audio descriptions. Feature films will have to include closed captions and audio descriptions in their DCP (digital cinema package) to procure a censor certificate.

Senthil Kumar at 55th IFFI

From September 15 onwards, it was mandatory for multilingual films to have these features.

Senthil said that making films accessible to the specially abled is not just a social imperative but will also benefit the filmmakers. He cited a study that showed films with accessibility features had more box office collections. “It’s not that more specially abled persons attended the shows but their families and friends joined them to collectively enjoy the experience of watching a film,” he said.

For assisting persons with visual impairment, there is something called the visual impaired narrative (VI tracks), popularly called audio description (AD). It’s narrating the story in between the dialogues. For the hearing impaired, there are two things. For those who only need only a little bit of assistance, a separate audio mix of the movie is produced — more of the centre channel which has the dialogue is taken and less of the left and right which has the music and sound effects, and none of the surround.

For those with a greater hearing impairment, the other technologies are closed and open captions which have a description of the sound and sign language interpretation of the dialogues and the sound.

Theatres will have to set up closed captioning smart glasses, closed captioning stands and earphones for audio description. There are also mobile apps which have this feature. The apps will sync the sound in the theatre and generate the necessary features. But this feature will be available only if the CC and AD of the film is available in the apps. Senthil believes “a hybrid approach is the best long term approach” but he also supports mobile apps which are cloud based so that “accessibility can be as wide as possible”.

A scene from the Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt-starrer ‘Brahmāstra’ with closed captions was shown. Audio captions like ‘Shiva grunts’, ‘thrilling music continues’ and ‘music abruptly ends’ were seen.

A scene from ‘Mohenjodaro’ with audio description was played next. It felt like listening to an audio book where we’re not necessarily imagining the exact scene in the film but the description enhances the imagination.

Producing audio descriptions can be more challenging than CC because the scene description must come in between dialogues, and the time duration can often be limited.

“The MIB rule says all feature films need to provide one feature each for the visually impaired and one with hearing impairment. It’s not necessary to include both sign language and closed captions. I’m not sure if this is right or wrong from users’ perspective. But this is what the regulation says,” Senthil added.

“It’s not just about the cinematic experience but also a social experience. They can join in with the rest of the audience in cheering for the hero when he makes an appearance, for example,” he concluded, adding, “Accessibility is not a feature, it’s a social imperative.”