RNID pulls out of cinema subtitling project citing ‘little progress’ over last three years

The Royal National Institute for Deaf people (RNID) has withdrawn from the UK Cinema Association’s (UKCA) Subtitling Challenge Fund, it has been revealed, criticising “little progress” in the area since 2019.

The UKCA fund, launched in 2018 in partnership with the deaf charity, looks to “stimulate new innovations in the delivery of subtitling” for deaf people when attending the cinema.

The latest update on the project came in May 2019, when the UKCA confirmed three proposals – which included assistive eyewear put forward by the National Theatre and a secondary screen suggested by Screen Language – had been shortlisted for the first round of funding.

However, Teri Devine, Associate Director for Inclusion at RNID, told The Limping Chicken: “RNID has engaged with the UKCA over a number of years to try and improve accessibility in cinemas including testing tech solutions such as smart glasses with people who are deaf and have hearing loss.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen little progress in this area over the last three years. We have therefore decided to primarily focus on improving accessibility by encouraging cinemas to show more captioned screenings, which is something that can happen now.”

In a statement explaining the three-year wait for an update, UKCA Chief Executive Phil Clapp said the coronavirus pandemic had “hit our members and partners in a variety of different ways”, with cinema closures affecting their ability to “follow-up on the trials” of the subtitles glasses which were carried out at the BFI in London in early 2020.

Mr Clapp continued: “More importantly, it also saw the team responsible for developing the [glasses] technology leave the National Theatre. As a result, it has taken us some time to pick up the pieces and only in recent months – where that team has re-established itself as the stand-alone company ‘Built for Good’ (BfG) – have we once again been in a position to hold meaningful discussions.”

“As it is, we have now provided BfG with some further funding to continue with those developments, and hope to be able to come out to everyone with a positive update in the next few weeks.”

When approached by The Limping Chicken for comment, Tim Middleton of Built for Good said the company was pleased to be creating a “new closed captioning system for cinema” using “the latest available smart glasses to display subtitles to cinemagoers on-demand”.

He added: “The new glasses offer an improved user experience with reduced weight across the nose and ears, and more control of where the text sits within the depth of field.

“We look forward to testing the glasses with users later this year, and to continuing to improve the cinema experience for people who wish to use closed captions.”

Asked what the formation of BfG meant for their smart captions glasses and plans for opening up the technology to other industries, a National Theatre spokesperson said: “The National Theatre remains committed to making our productions accessible to all, including our d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences. We continue to provide our smart caption glasses for use at as many National Theatre productions as possible and strive to widen future access to this provision beyond the Southbank.”

Referring to the RNID’s decision to part ways with the project, Mr Clapp said the UKCA would be looking to “see how we can re-constitute our previous ‘user panel’” – a group of Deaf individuals who fed back to the representative body on the new tech proposals.

“The RNID have taken the decision not to offer renewed support for the panel and to instead focus their efforts on pushing for more open caption screening – something we’ve never seen as an either/or.

“As a result, we’ll need to reach out to [user panel members] individually,” he said.

News of the Subtitling Challenge Fund’s latest developments come a day after the UKCA faced widespread criticism for announcing a temporary increase in subtitled screenings for one week only, as part of this year’s Deaf Awareness Week.

Jo Campion, of the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS), slammed the move as a “publicity-seeking gimmick” with large cinema chains paying “lip service to accessibility”.

Photo: UK Cinema Association.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.