Deaf News: Over 140 theatregoers trial National Theatre’s new smart captions glasses

Over 140 people booked the National Theatre’s smart captions glasses in its first two trial performances, the organisation has revealed.

Launched in October 2018, the glasses were made available for performances of Hadestown and War Horse before being rolled out for the National’s new season in 2019.

Jonathan Suffolk, Technical Director at the National Theatre, said: “We are delighted that 141 people have used the glasses over the runs of War Horse and Hadestown – a total of 45 performances.

“It is worth noting that these two shows were both very well sold – in the case of War Horse, almost completely sold out – at the point at which we launched the glasses.

“We are seeing a really positive uptake across the new NT season which has just gone on sale with glasses available on all shows, due to good ticket availability and a wider variety of shows to suit all tastes.

Using Wi-Fi and voice recognition, the glasses display captions on its lenses in time with the production, synchronising text with dialogue and sound effects.

Chris, a deaf smart captions glasses user who attended a performance of Hadestown with his wife last week, said: “We have attended Stagetext and Signed performances at the National in the past, all of which have been good, but we found the captioned glasses, with the ability to position the text, change the colour and follow the action directly made a huge difference to our enjoyment of the show.

“It is a mind blowing realisation that we can now attend any mainstream performance at the National without being tied to special Access performances at limited times.”

The technology is now available to book for 2019 such as Follies, Tartuffe and Top Girls, as well as being available for performances during the current UK tour of Macbeth.

Previews of new productions cannot be viewed with the devices, with the technology becoming available as soon as possible after the script for a show is confirmed.

Meanwhile, for returning shows or those which are coming to the National Theatre from another venue, the glasses will be available from the very first performance.

More information about the smart captions glasses can be found on the National Theatre’s website.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and blogger from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and makes the occasional video about deaf awareness on his YouTube channel. He can also be found talking about disability, politics, theatre, books and music on his Twitter, or on his website.