Captioning Awareness Week 2024
You know those moments when everything just clicks into place? That’s exactly what Captioning Awareness Week felt like this year. We highlighted the 18 million deaf, deafened or hard of hearing adults in the UK. Over 10 days the Stagetext team pulled out all the stops in celebrating deaf access to arts and culture across the UK. From performances to groundbreaking broadcasts, we’ve seen accessibility take centre stage.
Highlights from the week
We launched the week with a free Deaf Awareness Training session at the beautiful Gorleston Pavilion in Norfolk. We warmly welcoming participants from across the arts and culture sector to learn how to make their events more accessible. Alex Youngs, Gorleston Pavilion’s Chief Executive, said: “Working with Stagetext isn’t just about ticking boxes – it’s about opening doors for everyone to enjoy the arts.”
Our participants also got to experience a live subtitled tour of the historic venue, using tablets or phones to access the subtitles. Through this demo we were able to show just how straightforward deaf access can be. We’re thrilled to say that the feedback was very positive!
That’s just the beginning. . .
A particularly memorable moment was our collaboration with Channel 4’s ‘The Last Leg’. By providing live subtitles for the studio audience during a live broadcast, we took another step toward making cultural experiences accessible to everyone.
Stagetext’s Deputy CEO, Liz Hilder, spends half her week at Bristol Old Vic. During Captioning Awareness Week, she chatted with their blog team about her journey with Stagetext, sharing her captioning expertise and her passion for making arts and culture accessible. Have a read of the full interview.
Thanks to our amazing ambassadors, volunteers, and supporters, who held or promoted captioned or live subtitled events, shared our posts, and helped spread the word about accessible events across the UK. Together, we’re making arts and culture a space where everyone feels welcome.
Thank You!
