Friday, October 01, 2021
Exploring Accessible Technology in Theatre: Captioning
AMT Lab @ CMU: Many people attend theatrical performances as a way to escape daily life for a few hours. However, there are some who are unable to share these experiences. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one in eight people in the United States ages 12+ have hearing loss in both ears.
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Accessibility in theatre is something that is often overlooked. Theatres are built with seats that are not size inclusive, there is a lack of ramps for both audience members and those working on or in the production. One of the arguably most left out groups in theatre is the deaf. Theatre relies heavily on audio to tell the story, and unlike movies who can easily add text on screen, adding captioning is a much harder task. Before reading the article (and the article points out) attempts in the past to make theatre accessible for deaf people has had mixed results. Something new that I didn’t know prior to this article was the types of captioning: open vs closed. Open captioning is meant to be viewed by entire audiences. It can be text on a screen, or an interpreter. Closed captioning is only meant to be viewed by those who require or request it. There are a couple times of closed captioning, including phone apps and glasses that projected the text. I thought the glasses were an incredibly interesting solution. Theatre is an industry that is always changing and evolving, and I love to see all the out of box ideas theatrical creators come up with.
This article provides a variety of solutions for a problem I had not yet considered in depth. In theaters I have worked in, only open captioning had been available. The call for better closed captioning systems, which allow people to access the captioning they specifically need, is a necessary one for live entertainment. The ideas presented in the article each had interesting implications: for example, smartphones and theaters don’t always mix well, but no one want to pay $1200 for captioning. Both options have their appeals and drawbacks, and both would work for different people and theaters. Mostly, however, I appreciated the emphasis on the creation of new solutions. One of my favorite creative captioning choices was Graeae’s The Solid Life of Sugar Water, which integrated the captioning into the set. This was a very clever way of combining design and accessibility, and I think it serves as a reminder that the captioning needs of every show can and should be changed to suit the show itself. Creative captioning solutions will be necessary, and can be accomplished by hiring deaf creatives and continuing to question the accessibility norms in the theater industry.
It's encouraging that the technology is getting good enough to be useful and customizable. As is said several times in the article, accessibility isn't a one size fits all solution, and the best solution to the problem of making performances accessible to hearing impaired patrons seems to be customizable heads up display glasses, which are starting to appear. With that used as a closed captioning system, rather than opening, each patron can adjust their settings so that it is most useful and transparent for them, rather than everyone trying to read the same supertitles or watching an ASL interpreter. It makes sense that opera is a leader in this as well, since supertitles have been common for a while and benefit all patrons, not just the hearing impaired. I also hope that this can be a reverse example of the 'theatre uses products developed for other industries' rule. My grandfather has been slowly losing his hearing for years, and we've discussed something like captioning glasses as an ideal solution, but the tech isn't quite good enough yet. But if captioning glasses are developed for live performance that aren't cued, they actually respond to live input, that could filter out and make a lot of peoples' lives better.
As storytellers, it is our responsibility to ensure we are available to everyone. The widely diverse therapeutic benefits of theater should not be confined to those privileged enough to be in the majority group, who don’t face issues of class, disability, or any other sort of oppression. And as we see in this shocking statistic in the beginning of this article, one in eight people in the United States ages 12+ have hearing loss in both ears, which means it would be close to impossible for them to experience theater in the way we have presented it to those who are privileged enough to have full hearing. I worked on a play recently that had full yiddish, hebrew, spanish, chinese, french, and german. I really enjoyed what we did, which was to project the original text and then the English translation, but in reflection of this article I see that it is still not accessible. We had ASL interpreters two nights in our entire two-week run, but people who are HOH would still not be able to fully understand it, as we moved very quickly and the English was not projected. As scenic designer for that project, I wish I would have recognized that and adjusted the projections to fit that need, and I hope to take that lesson into my practices from here on.
Accessibility in the theater industry is a long ignored and a long debated industry, which is obviously contradictory. To elaborate, I would say that the issue is ignored by larger theaters like the more commercialized broadway shows and hotly debated by theaters that put at least some effort into diversity. The debate, to them, is over technique, not whether or not to include subtitles. Theater makers who don’t wish to be accessible do not participate in this conversation. However, the discussion has stagnated in theaters across the world. Since they come to conclusion, no change is made and nothing becomes better. I think the best way to successfully integrate subtitles into theater as a norm, is to have everyone try something different and allow something or multiple things to catch on and take off. However, then we will face the question: does every single piece of theatre need subtitles. High School Plays? Middle School? That raises the question of cost, who can afford to provide subtitles?
I am really really happy that some theaters are incorporating captioning into at least one of their performance for the people who need assisted listening. It is so true that so many people watch theater to escape from their regular life into a different world for a couple of hours, and they do that with the support of the scenic, lighting, sound, costume elements of the show, and in the case that one cannot enjoy all of these elements in sync, I think a part of the experience is lost.
I have worked on two shows which use captioning and I found that they are very useful and rather easy to incorporate in a show. Of course the shows that I was a part of were not operas or musicals or longer pieces, so there are definitely layers or difficulty that I am not able to see but when I think of how something like captioning can positively impact a person, I just feel like it is worth the effort.
At CCBC where I worked before coming to CMU we partnered with a local deaf theatre company to do an integrated performance where select members of the cast were deaf which meant Romeo and Juliet both knew ASL (I believe of the two of them, Juliet was deaf while Romeo's father was also deaf). The result of this was a really beautifully integrated performance that sort of built accessibility into the performance itself. However dialogue did happen at times entirely in ASL or entirely in verbal language. For these parts of the performance, we used QLab to write the entirety of these lines (Well, every line, really) and it was projected onto parts of the set. It was a really amazing performance and I have often thought that shows like it should be done more often.
I am glad that this is a conversation that is opening up! Accessibility in theatre is something that is often overlooked, but also something I have seen gain some traction in recent years. In my own life, I find closed captions to be very helpful for myself despite not having any auditory processing issues (that I'm aware of). When I don't have the energy to pay full attention to the action, or when sounds are too much for me to handle, or just to make sure I don't miss any dialogue, closed captions are there for me and make my life easier. As someone with family members who are hard of hearing and also enjoy performance art, I am happy to see that steps are being taken to make their experience more streamlined and enjoyable. I like that the article lays out a few solutions that have been implemented, and I'm eager to see where the theatre industry continues to develop this.
Accessibility to performances is such an overlooked issue in the industry and admittedly, I haven’t thought about it before either. After reading the article, I realised the limits of accessibility that are faced in theatres but also learning that newer technologies are used to better accommodate the performance experience. The Smart Caption glasses, in my opinion, are a renovational technology and I’m excited to see them being implemented across the globe once the problem with pricing is resolved. Open captioning is also super useful in theatres, especially when productions are brought abroad to different countries. I remember seeing Broadway shows in China with open captioning screens on either side of the stage. Whilst they are crucial because the majority of the audience aren’t able to understand the dialogues in English, I found them very distracting having to move my eyes between the screens and the performers on stage. I hope theatres are taking this into consideration and provide more accessible tools for those in need.
Accessibility in theatre is a major issue. Theatre can have major benefits to those for whom theatre is not normally accessible, however these people are often overlooked. One of the topics that I think was somewhat discussed was the financial difficulties with many of these options, such as the glasses. Who is financially responsible, is it the theatres or the patrons? And if it is the theatres, are the patrons with different levels of hearing expected to pay a higher price for their tickets? Another issue with the glasses that I think wasn’t addressed is the subtlety. I know at least in my personal experience I haven’t always wanted people to know that I had a certain accommodation for something. With very individualized options it can feel like a call out, whereas in theatres where the entire performance is open caption or text is integrated into the design (Graeae looks absolutely fascinating) it is a more inclusive environment.
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