Captioning is a way of converting the spoken word into visible text that provides deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people with access to live theatre performances. The captions are prepared in advance and delivered live from a laptop computer by a trained captioner, and as they scroll audience members can follow what is said, when it is said and by whom. Sound effects and musical cues are also included as these can represent information that is vital for the audience’s full enjoyment of the performance.

Audiences

In Northern Ireland there are 219,000 deaf or hard of hearing people, equating to 13% of the population. Yet of the 219,000 people with hearing loss, only 17,000 are actually profoundly or severely deaf. The rest have mild to moderate deafness and of these 140,000, or 64% are over 60 years of age. In other words, most people with a hearing loss have acquired it simply by getting older.

In many cases, people who find captioning useful used to enjoy attending the arts, but stopped when their hearing loss became too severe. Captioning can be an excellent way for arts venues to encourage their valuable older audiences to keep attending their events.

Captioning has another strong application – that of acting as a ‘translator’ for people for whom English is not their first language. Captioning offers an opportunity to develop audiences from the newly arrived communities.

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