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October 7, 2018 04:16 pm

National Theater In London Offers Glasses With Live Subtitles

The National Theater in London has introduced "smart caption glasses" that display dialogue on the lenses as actors speak (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The glasses should drastically improve the experience for audience members who have hearing difficulties. According to The New York Times, "The glasses can be used without charge for the play 'War Horse' and for the musical 'Hadestown,' and they will be available for all of the theater's 2019 season." From the report: Jonathan Suffolk, the theater's technical director, said that the glasses had taken two years to develop. "We could have offered the scripts on a phone, but we wanted a technology that was much more discreet and immersive and wouldn't disturb anyone," he said. The biggest challenge was creating software that allowed the words to be displayed in real time so that people wearing the glasses reached important moments -- such as jokes -- along with everyone else, Mr. Suffolk added. It is easy to load a script into a subtitling system and hit "ego" at the start of the play, he said, but problems would then arise if actors spoke quicker or slower than expected. The software used by the theater follows live speech and recognizes certain stage directions, like lighting changes, to ensure the subtitles appear in the right place. The words are then transmitted to the glasses over Wi-Fi. According to Andrew Lambourne, a professor at Leeds Beckett University who worked on the project, a major obstacle that the software had to overcome was recognizing speech even when actors were talking over each other or being bombarded by sound effects. Mr. Suffolk said it was difficult to know how many people would use the equipment. The theater has bought 50 pairs, at a cost of around $1,050 per pair. The National Theater will make the glasses available to some other British venues next year, including during a touring production of "Macbeth." The Barbican Theater in London said in a statement that it was in talks about using them.

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