Posted on April 21, 2009 by John Waldo

Seattle theaters becoming more accessible

Seattle's vibrant drama scene continues to become more accessible to people with hearing loss, as both the Intiman Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Theatre take concrete steps towards offering captioned performances and Paramount Theatre releases its full schedule of captioned shows in 2009.

Following our written requests for captioned performances, I had a very productive meeting earlier this week with Intiman's incoming and outgoing Board presidents and two of its key staff members. Intiman is receptive to the idea of captioning one performance of each of its annual productions, and is currently seeking financial support from the Theatre Development Fund of New York to make that possible. (One of TDF's missions is to enhance accessibility of live theater).

Seattle Repertory Theatre is in the same situation. It plans to start offering captioned performances beginning this fall, and it is looking for funding as well, also from TDF.

I suggested to the Intiman managers that rather than everyone making separate applications for a finite pot of money, the theaters apply jointly for a grant that would support captioning for both. I also suggested they consider forming a consortium to buy the equipment and recruit and train a captioner -- an approach that theaters in England have used to make theater captioning far more common there than here. (We had also raised this possibility with TDF itself, and the feedback we got was that Seattle might be an attractive place to try out this joint approach).

In the interim, Intiman is going to reserve scripts and penlights that will be available on request beginning this Friday, April 24.

Meanwhile, Seattle's largest theater, the Paramount, has released its schedule of captioned performances for 2009. "Frost/Nixon" will be captioned on May 10, "Rent" on June 21, "Wicked" on September 27, "August: Osage County" on November 1 and "Fiddler on the Roof" on November 29.  Tickets for the captioned performances will be available on line.

The Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP), a non-profit membership corporation dedicted to making Washington's public places accessible to people with hearing loss, began working with (or on, depending on your point of view), Seattle's live theaters a year ago to make their offerings available to us through captioning. At Wash-CAP's behest, the Paramount began captioning last August, and has now offered captioned performances of six Broadway musicals. Seattle's other large theater, Fifth Avenue, will begin presenting captioned performances in the fall of 2009, and we are working now to expand the use of captioning into some of our smaller venues.

 

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Posted on April 13, 2009 by John Waldo

Mariners, Nintendo bring us into the game

The Seattle Mariners and Nintendo, the Mariners' principal owner, are teaming up to make this season's games more accessible to fans with hearing loss. Their method -- a video gaming device.

Nintendo and the Mariners have been working for a couple of years on the Nintendo Fan Network, which allows someone to bring a portable Nintendo gaming console to the game, then use it during the game to access a number of interactive features. To promote use of the network and the purchase of the gaming devices, the Mariners are going to be loaning 150 of the devices to fans on a first-come, first-served basis, according to a story in this morning's Seattle Times.

After the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) approached the Mariners about captioning the public-address announcements at Safeco Field, the Mariners and Nintendo evidently figured out how to add captioning to its menu of  features accessible via the DSi gaming device. So we can set the device to display captions of those announcements as well as ordering food, checking scores, and all the other things that can be done.

Importantly, the Mariners will reserve some units specifically for the hard of hearing, and those won't be subject to the first-come, first-served rule. 

According to the Seattle Times story, the devices will be available from a kiosk on the main concourse near Section 142.

I get the feeling this is a work in progress, and the story suggests that this is something of an experiment in how best to make in-stadium communication accessible to those with hearing loss. Let's give it a try, thank the Mariners and Nintendo for trying to respond to our needs, and give them the feedback necessary to make the system really work.

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