1. Making every word count Tabitha Allum, Chief Executive
[email protected]
2. Background to STAGETEXT: Founded in 2000 following trip to
London by some deaf New Yorkers where they brought captioning with
them 5 of our 10 Trustees and 2 of our 6 staff are deaf, deafened
or hard of hearing Currently receive regular funding from Arts
Council England but also make a charge to theatres, museums and
galleries Started in theatre, now expanding to other places like
museums and galleries 3. What does STAGETEXT do?: Deliver captioned
performances in theatres and speech-to-text transcribed talks in
museums, galleries and other cultural venues Help theatres set up
their own captioning services by advising them on equipment and
training local people as captioners Develop technology to widen and
improve the audience experience Promote the service to audiences 4.
Why captioning? 5. Why captioning? 6. The audience for captioning:
UKs 10m deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people 55% of over 60s
and 71% of over 70s have agerelated deafness Hearing people who
dont hear so well any more People studying the play or topic People
who dont have English as their first language 7. Captioning for
theatre: Captioner is trained levels of grammar and punctuation are
assessed before training Captioner receives electronic script and
DVD Captioner prepares the text so it mirrors the way the actors
deliver their lines Includes names of characters and descriptions
of music and sound effects Captioner outputs text live 8.
Speech-to-text for talks and unscripted performances: Use a
stenographer or Palantypist What is being said is transcribed using
a special keyboard and a phonetic shorthand software programme The
STTR doesnt need a script in advance, but does need all proper
nouns so that the text is accurately spelt Text is displayed on the
same screen as the slides, or on a separate screen 9. Open
captioning in theatre via LED displays:Royal Court TheatreGaiety
Theatre, Isle of Man 10. Open captioning in theatre via plasma/LCD
and projection:The Captioning Studio, AustraliaTin Bath Theatre 11.
Closed captioning in theatre:Fuel: Going Dark at the Young
VicAirscript in the West End 12. The options: Outsource to
STAGETEXT Buy/share/borrow equipment For theatre: hire captioner or
train your own? For unscripted events: STTR or revoicer? Paid or
volunteers? Get together with other venues if youre a receiving
venue and caption the whole tour Caption the tour if youre a
touring company and share the costs 13. Thank you for listening
[email protected] www.stagetext.org
