Must a Pennsylvania movie theater provide special interpretation services to a patron who is deaf and blind, even if the cost will far exceed the price of a ticket to the film?

Maybe, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made that call in reviving a lawsuit filed by Paul McGann against Cinemark USA Inc.

McGann, who is represented by the Disability Rights Network of PA, claims Cinemark, a Texas-based theater chain, violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act when it refused to provide him with a tactile interpreter so he could experience the movie “Gone Girl” in late 2014.

As Judge L. Felipe Restrepo noted in the appeals court ruling, McGann wanted to see the film in a Cinemark theater in the western part of the state because it had already left the theater he normally attended.

His regular theater provided him with a tactile interpreter, who translated movies for him by American Sign Language using touch. His wife did that for McGann until her death in 2001, Restrepo noted.

McGann, who was born deaf and became progressively blind starting at age 5, appealed to the Third Circuit court when a U.S. Western District judge in Pittsburgh found in favor of Cinemark after a bench trial on McGann’s suit. The district judge found that McGann’s request for a tactile interpreter exceeded the mandates of the ADA to provide the disabled access to entertainment venues.

Cinemark did look into McGann’s request for a tactile interpreter and found that two interpreters would be needed to provide the service for McGann at a rate of $50 to $65 each per hour, Restrepo noted.

“Gone Girl” runs for 2 1/2 hours.

The circuit judges sent the case back to the district court for further consideration after concluding that McGann’s plea for an interpreter did not exceed the accommodation requirements of the ADA. The U.S. Department of Justice took the same stance in a brief it filed backing McGann in his appeal.

However, Restrepo wrote, the district court must still must consider another defense Cinemark can mount in the case – whether McGann’s request placed an “undue burden” on the theater.

Such a defense considers several factors, including the cost of the accommodation requested.

Restrepo cited Cinemark’s claim that McGann’s was the first such request its Robinson Township theater received and that it hasn’t received any other such requests since.