Cineworld tries to force autistic boy to leave kids film for laughing too loudly‏

From an email I have just received from Kate Linke:

On New Year’s Eve we decided to take our two sons, the elder of whom is severely autistic, to the midday viewing of the children’s movie Rise of the Guardians at the Cineworld O2 in Greenwich.

Noah (our autistic son) attends a special residential school so family outings of this type are very rare and special to us and to our other son Oliver, age 6. Over the years we have taken Noah to the cinema a number of times and have developed a good strategy for minimizing any disruption to other members of the audience, including sitting on the back row and having two adults present at all times in the unlikely event that Noah needs to be taken out.

The whole family was enjoying the film immensely so we were amazed when 15 minutes into the screening we were approached by an usher and asked to leave the theatre because Noah – who like most of the children in the audience was laughing loudly – was “making too much noise”. When we explained that he was autistic we were told that this was irrelevant. Two other families who were sitting near us became aware of the situation and pleaded on our behalf, but their requests were disregarded by the usher.

My husband asked to see the manager outside.  When he eventually arrived he initially supported the usher but after a further 10 minutes’ discussion agreed to come and see for himself what Noah was doing. At this point he conceded that Noah was making no more noise than any other child in the theatre and agreed to let us stay. The whole process took over 30 minutes, causing great distress to us all as well as meaning that my husband missed one-third of the film.

Ironically Cineworld promotes a ‘Movies for All’ policy and even prides itself on having run “special autism screenings” (whatever these are) in 14 of its 79 cinemas.  It also claims to have put over 2000 staff – a group which clearly didn’t include this particular manager or usher – through special “Disability Awareness and Welcoming Disabled Customers” training.

Even more ironically, this particular incident happened on the final day of 2012 – of Britain celebrating a year of being more accessible than ever before. One might hope that the incredible achievements of our Paralympic athletes might have permeated the minds of even the most lowly of leisure industry employees.