Paramount Pictures UK partners with the British Deaf Association and cinemas across the country to give priority screenings to the deaf and hard of hearing community 

In collaboration with the FDA (Film Distributors’ Association) and UKCA (UK Cinema Association) and in association with the BDA (British Deaf Association) Paramount Pictures are seeking to further improve the relationship between cinema and the 18 million people in the UK registered as Deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing.

The aim of the partnership is to increase the number of captioned screenings, ensuring they are scheduled at different times throughout the week, while also raising deaf awareness among front-of-house cinema staff, including offering introductory British Sign Language (BSL) training.

Training sessions have already taken place across the country with cinema staff receiving training from the BDA’s experienced trainers as well as the BDA Celebrity Ambassador Yvonne Cobb.

Yvonne is a television cook and presenter who is best known from BBC One’s Morning Live and her presenting role on See Hear. Sharing her support for the initiative, Yvonne stated:

“The deaf community wants to enjoy the cinema, wants to trust this environment, and wants to enjoy new cinema releases. All we need to do is make a few simple changes to accommodate them.”

Beginning with the movie Transformers One, participating cinemas offered an exclusive captioned preview screening back on October 10th – a whole day ahead of the film’s national release.

Paramount Pictures will also offer similar ‘caption only’ previews for subsequent releases; Gladiator II, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and into next year with The Smurfs Movie.

Andy Leyshon, Chief Executive at the FDA commented:

“We should all be striving to improve accessibility and enhance the audience experience in cinemas, and this initiative from Paramount is a great further step forward that will hopefully lead to a much better offer in this area as we progress.

We also know that there is a general increase in audiences choosing to watch captioned content either on mobile devices or at home watching TV – suggesting that captioned shows are now more likely to be accepted by general audiences, not just the deaf community.”

Jaz Mann, who is Head of Community for the British Deaf Association  and led on the initiative with Paramount stated:

‘It’s such a rarity for us to be first to see films, before hearing people! Congratulations to Paramount on leading by example – hopefully other distributors will follow their lead!’

In-person training for front of house cinema staff took place across the country throughout September and October.

To see a list of all captioned screenings, including the previews of Gladiator II, please go to:
https://www.yourlocalcinema.com/gladiator2.html