When or when NOT to sell Wheelchair seats...

[Chris Chapman]

Okay, here is an interesting quandry. Dust off your law books and look up your copy of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

All of our spaces have sections in the house for wheelchairs only. When do you decide to fill those seats with temporary seating for a sold out event?

If it's sold out, how could you put those seats in you ask? Let's say all of your fixed seating is sold out, but your handicapped accessible spaces are not.

Do you not sell those spaces, holding them for a wheelchair that never shows? OR do you sell them, and then deal with a wheelchair that shows up at the last minute.

This riddle is based NOT on advanced sales, but tickets at the door the night of performance.

Annnnnnd.......... DISCUSS!

-Chris

[soundlight]

At a community venue that I used to work at, we left wheelchair spaces open for reservations that required wheelchair slots, and then a few more. If our tickets sold out in the house, and no one had taken the extra wheelchair slots yet, we sold them, becasue wheelchair or not, we wanted to sell the seats. Ticket costs the same whether you have a wheelchair or not, and just because you have a wheelchair doesn't entitle you to have a seat over someone who doesn't have a wheelchair. Basically, we filled based on who showed up. If you reserved a wheelchair slot, you were garunteed it, but if the rest of our seats sold out, and there's still a line, we weren't gonna go through the line to find any wheelchair folks, we just took as many as we can fit in the space that we had left, first come first serve. But anyone with a reserved ticket that needed a wheelchair slot got it, and you had to indicate so when ordering tickets, because we had to arrange seating differently depending on how many wheelchairs were coming.

[icewolf08]

This actually brings up fire code issues. A designate wheelchair spot may be capable of fitting more than one portable chair, but fire codes may prevent you from having more than X number of fixed seats plus Y number of wheelchairs, or just XYZ total capacity. If by putting chairs in the wheel chair seats you exceed the capacity rating for the theatre you could be in big trouble. In fact, in some places just putting in temporary seating can be a violation of fire codes.

[soundlight]

I was actually the person in charge of having the fire marshall come inspect our seating arrangements, so nothing was done out of fire code.

[thebikingtechie]

I agree with sounlight on this one, if you have people who want the seats and there's nowhere else to put them, put them in the wheelchair spots. As long as everyone who has reserved seats gets seats it's all good. Just as long as you're not letting in non wheelchair patrons for last minute while denying seats to wheelchair patrons who come at the same time.

[icewolf08]

Originally Posted by thebikingtechie

I agree with sounlight on this one, if you have people who want the seats and there's nowhere else to put them, put them in the wheelchair spots. As long as everyone who has reserved seats gets seats it's all good. Just as long as you're not letting in non wheelchair patrons for last minute while denying seats to wheelchair patrons who come at the same time.

Only if by adding seats you are not breaking fire codes. In soundlight's case where the fire marshal signed off on it, it is fine. But you can't go sticking temporary seats in the house without making sure it is legal.

[jwl868]

Information about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) can be found at:

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm

The specific question, as it has been applied to stadiums, is addressed at the link below. I see no reason why it doesn't apply to all venues:

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/stadium.pdf

Joe

[jwl868]

Just a follow up to my last post.

The text of the law (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 [42 U.S.C. 12181]) says:

"No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation."

This is the primary feature of the law. It is about discrimination.

So, if all of the regular seats are sold out, then the unsold wheelchair seats are open to everyone, but on a first-come, first-serve basis (which is presumably non-discriminitory.)

What is less clear to me is the case where all the "good" seats are sold out, but there are plenty of "cheap" seats and all of the wheelchair seats are available. Some, and maybe all, of the wheelchair seats are in the "good" section [as required by the law]. If, just prior to curtain, you sell all the wheechair seats to able-bodied people, what do you do if a handicapped individual arrives a few minutes late?

[I haven't looked into this - the law has been around for so long, I'm sure its come up.]

Joe

[Chris Chapman]

Thanks to everyone on some great responses. If we do go this route, we plan on replacing our wheelchairs with the same number of temporary seats. The foot print is smaller, and then doesn't move out into aisles. Fire Marshall is okay with this.

This comes from a vendor who wanted to sell all seats possible, and would sell our ADA seats to anyone. Our current rules reserve adjacent seats as companion seating for wheelchairs.

Joe, your quandry about the good sections and selling the seats and then have a handicapped indivudal arrive late is exactly what my debate with some of our ticket vendors is. I guess the darkside answer is if they show up late, and the venue is sold out, it IS sold out. I don't think too many patrons would actually argue their way into a sold out event, especially if they didn't secure their tickets in advance. Everyone runs the risk of an event being sold out and not getting admission to an event because the patron waited too long to buy their ticket is a risk everyone in every audience runs.

This is the kind of discussion I love from this site.

Thanks guys.

-Chris

[tenor_singer]

I'm thinking about this from a marketing point of view. How much do you stand to make selling that space versus the cost of public image spin you'd have to go through because you upset a special interest group. Once your company's reputation is damaged, it is very expensive to gain it back. IMHO you'd be better served reserving those spaces. People are quick to jump to the aid of special needs people and upsetting enough of them can cause a loss in seating revenue.

When I ran our local theater, I happily took the loss of 8 ticket sales (that amounted to $80.00) on the off chance that we did receive a last minute wheelchair patron.

Why? It showed that we were caring enough to hold seating for special needs people... even if it meant taking a slight loss of revenue. Personally I think the $640.00 per show run was a worthwhile investment in the positive image of our company.