Following a series of research events at the National Theatre earlier this year, Stagetext are pleased to release the findings of our technology project, which saw 166 people test the quality of new automatic theatre captions produced by CaptionCue.
The events tested captions as they were received by users with and without hearing loss through different devices: open captions displayed on LED screens on the side of the stage, an LED screen integrated in the centre of the stage and also closed captions displayed on tablets.
Overall, the research and development project demonstrated that automatic caption cueing is possible. The testing events appeared to widely contradict the widely held notion that theatre captions draw hearing and non-hearing viewers away from the action.
Speaking about the project, Stagetext CEO Melanie Sharpe said ‘As the new CEO of Stagetext, I’m excited about the wide possibilities that this project offers to caption users across the country.’
You can read the full report here.
This short, subtitled film from The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts features CaptionCue, as well as the other projects which used digital to make the arts more accessible https://vimeo.com/133124517.
CaptionCue was funded by Digital R&D Fund for the Arts – Nesta, Arts & Humanities Research Council and public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
