Just as Straz Center’s outreach programs bring the arts to underserved communities, Guest Services reaches out to make sure our guests’ experiences are the best, regardless of their abilities.
Guest Services is adding new equipment and new features to enhance the theater-going experience for our guests with limited vision and hearing.
Among these are captioning glasses by U.K. firm Built for Good Technologies Ltd. The company develops and delivers accessibility solutions allowing hearing impaired people to enjoy movies and theater.
Caption glasses sync to WatchWord (for cinema) and WatchWord Live (for live theater), the company’s accessibility product.
Anthony Winter-Brown, Straz’s senior director of guest services, saw a demonstration of the glasses at last year’s LEAD (Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability).
After seeing the demonstration, Winter-Brown said, “I was confident this was the perfect addition to our accessibility services.”
The glasses were tested during performances of & Juliet. “I know this will be a game changer for our hard of hearing and deaf guests. We cannot wait to roll them out from Hell’s Kitchen onward,” he said.
The show’s script is entered into the glasses’ system along with cues to keep captioning and dialogue synced. The captions appear on the lens that users read.
“The system has voice recognition,” said Amanda Zappia, Guest Services’ events and accessibility supervisor. Zappia said. “It recognizes when the actor is speaking. So if there’s a big laugh or nobody’s speaking for a while, it’ll pause the captions while it continues.”
The captions can be adjusted to suit each user’s preferences, Zappia said.
“You can move the text, have it closer or further away,” Zappia said. “You can change the background, and you can change the font and color of the text.”
Guest Servies also is expanding its audio description service, bringing in a trainer to work with a group of Straz volunteers, teaching them the craft of making clear with words what is happening on stage. The service requires skill and nerves, as it’s done live.
Describers are seated in an area behind the sound booth where they are able to see the stage. Their descriptions are done in real time. While a pre-recorded description might seem preferable for accuracy, live theater can quickly show the holes in that theory.
“Things can change from performance to performance,” Zappia said. “If something like that happens they have to describe that. Or if there was an emergency that would have to describe that as well.”
Or if there was a thankfully false alarm in the middle of Beetlejuice? Nah, never happen. But if it did they’d be describing that as well.
The app used for Straz’s assisted listening system has had an upgrade that, among other features, can connect directly through Bluetooth to a hearing aid.
In contrast to the many upgrades involving digital equipment, another advance is something you can hold in your hands. It’s also an object that can be read with your hands.
Straz is partnering with researchers at the University of South Florida to develop tactile maps that will allow visually-impaired guests to independently navigate their way from the arrival plaza to the ticket booth and then to Morsani or Ferguson lobbies. The maps are being developed with plenty of input from the blind community, Zappia said.
The goal with the maps is to eventually incorporate them inside the theaters, allowing blind guests to navigate from the lobby to their seats without assistance. Blind guests will use the tactile maps so that they can move about freely without relying on anyone else for assistance.