Inventor, Jack Ezra says, "A great deal of work went into developing our LCD panel, backlight and software and future versions will allow a live or recorded person to be displayed doing sign-language. What audiences experience are clear captions or the signer in full colour, stretched across the display while the rest of the audience see nothing but a dark grey screen."
Jack teamed up with entrepreneur George Georgio about 18 months ago who says, "We are excited about piloting our new technology at a live show. We started with the idea of installing our systems just into cinemas but now we realize that it is as important to help deaf and hard of hearing audiences in a Live Theatre situation. For the cinema, we spent many months working on software with Dolby and Dorimi with tests taking place at Cineworld & Odeon cinemas.
"Writing the software which communicates between our system and the movie server has been the most challenging part of the project, as there are so many levels of encryption which have to be navigated through that accessing the caption files and playing them out from the movie server, has proved to be extremely complex."
"Other closed caption technology does exist from the likes of Sony where the viewer has to wear Virtual Reality type headsets but these devices are about £1,000 each and far more expensive than our "Invisible Subtitle" glasses which only cost £1. "Besides that, the sharing of headsets from show to show and from person to person is unhygienic and unreliable and unlike our glasses which come freshly packed."
A spokesman for the charity Action on Hearing Loss said, "We welcome the development of any new technology that aims to improve the theatre-going experience for people with hearing loss."
The new system is being piloted at The Harlow Playhouse on 4 October in the 2pm Copacabana show, which features former S Club 7 singer Jon Lee. The musical then goes on a UK Tour.
(Jim Evans)
