Richard Turner: Cinemas still don’t seem to care about deaf film lovers

Watching the highlights of the Oscar ceremony last night reminded me of how much I love watching a good film. It was great to see ’12 Years A Slave’ win best picture. I watched a captioned screening of this film recently at the cinema and I thought it was one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been to the cinema three times at different cinemas across London. Unfortunately, on the first two occasions I wasn’t actually able to watch the film. I ended up having to leave shortly after the film started due to subtitling failures.

On the first occasion, when I went to see ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ at a Cineworld cinema in Central London, only every other line of the subtitles was visible on the screen, so I couldn’t follow enough of the dialogue to watch it. The cinema manager explained to me that this was due to human error and incorrect scaling of the film for the size of the projection screen.

The second time, at my local Odeon cinema in South Woodford on a Sunday, there were no subtitles on the film at all, despite the fact that it was advertised on their website, posters and flyers as ‘Subtitled Sunday’. The cinema manager told me that the distributor had sent the wrong, un-subtitled film to the cinema in error, but nobody had noticed it before they screened it.

On both occasions, I complained to the cinema manager, who apologised, gave me a refund and complimentary vouchers to see a future film. But I left feeling upset and frustrated, since it wouldn’t be easy for me to go and watch the same film again and both cinema trips had been ruined.

Since then, I have discovered from my deaf friends on social media that cinema subtitling failures are much more common than I realised. It happens regularly in cinemas across the country.  In fact, it has happened to nearly every deaf cinema-goer I know.

Some deaf people have told me that they now have a drawer-full of complimentary vouchers from the cinemas. Others have said that even when the films are advertised as subtitled, their local cinema does not switch the subtitles on unless a customer complains about it as they assume there are no deaf customers there. It seems that many UK cinema chains do not take access issues seriously enough.

Sadly, this problem has been known about for a long time. Charlie Swinbourne reported it in ‘The Guardian’ in 2011  and it seems like since then nothing has changed. The trust that many deaf cinema-goers had in watching films at the cinema has gone. Many of them don’t go anymore because they’re worried the subtitles won’t work.

We sit in the dark for half an hour beforehand watching un-subtitled trailers and adverts we cannot follow, praying that the film we have paid to see will be subtitled as advertised. But it feels like a lottery and we can never be sure until we see the first actor open his or her mouth on the big screen and the captions appear without a problem. Until then, we wait with nervous trepidation.

Going to the cinema is not a cheap night out either, so why should it be acceptable for deaf and hard of hearing people to experience so many subtitling failures and poor excuses from the cinemas for their lack of accessibility to us?

Yet Yourlocalcinema.com told me that reported subtitling failures are very rare. I believe that the scale of the problem is massively underestimated because many deaf and hard of hearing people just don’t report it. Often they have communication problems explaining it to the manager and don’t want to complain, as it is too stressful for them. We simply keep accepting the vouchers from the cinema and the problem goes unreported.

There is also a need to inform hearing customers about the importance of subtitled films as the cinemas claim that some of them complain they are distracted by the subtitles. Until recently, they used to show a short clip before the main feature explaining the importance of subtitled films to deaf and hard of hearing people. Why don’t cinemas show this anymore?

When I was complaining about the subtitling failure to the cinema manager of Cineworld recently I saw an elderly hard-of-hearing woman there with her granddaughter. The elderly lady was clearly upset but she was too embarrassed to speak to the manager about it. Her granddaughter had to do it on her behalf. But this subtitling failure had ruined their cinema trip together.

But not every cinema has such a poor track record. Some of them have been excellent. The Curzon Cinema in Soho and the Vue Cinema in Piccadilly, London, for instance, have both been brilliant, with very helpful staff and great access. The London Subtitling Group meets regularly at the Curzon Cinema in Soho to watch subtitled films together in a friendly, relaxed environment. I wish there were more cinemas like this, which champion great access and inclusion for all their customers.

Along with other deaf and hard of hearing cinema fans, I just want to be able to watch my choice of film at the cinema when I want, like everyone else. I don’t want to have it decided for me by people who don’t know what I want to watch and when I want to watch it.

Although this seems an impossible goal at the moment, a lot more could be done to improve access to the cinema for deaf and hard of hearing people if the provision and quality of subtitled films was taken more seriously by more of the cinema chains across the UK. We need to engage with them more to campaign for better access and raise awareness of our needs.

By Richard Turner

Richard lost most of his hearing three years ago and has since become a passionate campaigner and award-winning volunteer for deaf charities. His aim is to increase deaf awareness and highlight the emotional impact of hearing loss, as well as showing the positive sides of deafness. Richard regularly blogs about accessibility and other deaf issues at his blog My New Deaf Journey

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