Temple has introduced new captioning technology to make theater performances more accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
“It’s similar to just subtitles or supertitles,” said J Lindner, the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications for Temple University’s School of Theater, Film and Media Arts.
Temple is the first university in the world to make these caption glasses accessible to theatergoers.
“They’re available every performance as opposed to in any one seat obviously,” Lindner said.
When the Institute of Disability received a grant for the technology, Lindner knew to bring this project to their attention. Lindner has been on a push for about 7 or 8 years to try and incorporate the glasses into the theater program.
Theatergoers can adjust the text, color and font size. They can also move the text in different directions on the glasses.
Junior Sophia Bosh, who was in the production of MacBeth where the glasses were first used, says the technology will continue to be available for audiences.
“I think this is like a step in the right direction for having more people be able to come to the shows and understand what’s going on, especially for the deaf community,” Bosh said.
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