26/04/2026
Genuinely, when did Cineworld become so inaccessible??
I’m autistic, and the cinema used to be one of my favourite places. Pre 2020, the Cineworld in Ipswich was somewhere I genuinely loved. I even told my now partner about it on our first date.
I must admit it’s been a few years since I had been to the cinema, I went through a pretty rough patch the last few years. So I was really excited to be back and bring my partner along to experience it with me.
But we had an awful time. The volume was so painfully loud we had to leave before the film even started. We couldn’t even sit through the ads.
I emailed Cineworld afterwards. Not just about a refund, but to actually ask about the accessibility of it. Because it’s not just me. Lots of neurodivergent people, people with sensory sensitivities, people with hearing conditions, are going to be affected by this.
I got a generic email back about their refund policy. No acknowledgement of the volume. No acknowledgement of accessibility. Nothing.
And look, I get it. Phones in cinemas are a nightmare and I understand why they might have cranked the volume up to drown it out, but when you’re autistic, the list of places you can comfortably go for a night out is not long.
Bars are loud. Restaurants can be overwhelming. A lot of social spaces just aren’t built with us in mind. The cinema was one of the few that worked. Consistent, contained, predictable. You knew what you were getting.
And for some autistic people, the cinema was already a stretch. They were already managing their sensory experience just to be there. Raising the volume doesn’t just inconvenience those people. It removes the option entirely. It takes something that was just about accessible and makes it completely inaccessible.
And that’s a loss that I don’t think Cineworld has really thought about, or if they have, they haven’t considered it worth addressing.