Trying to get tickets for a sell-
out production at London's
National Theatre is difficult
enough at the best of times,
but if you're hard of hearing,
it's trickier still.
Not only must you book tickets
for one of a small handful of
"captioned" shows, but you
must also try to secure the
seats in the part of the
auditorium that have the best
view of the screen.
It's something the theater is
hoping to change with the help
of Epson's latest smart glasses .
This week it launched a trial
that will see deaf and hearing-
impaired customers supplied
with the eyewear, which
displays subtitles in their field
of vision wherever they're
sitting.
"The problem we're aiming to
solve is the lack of choice and
the customer experience -- it's
twofold," Jonathan Suffolk, the
theater's technical director,
said in an interview. The smart
glass tech, he said, "gives
customers the chance to come
anytime they want, matinee or
evening, and sit anywhere they
want in any size theater."
The trial will run for a year
with the support of tech
consultancy Accenture and is
part of the National's wider
vision of ensuring theater
access for all. The always-on
service will run in all three of
the organization's theaters,
starting with the Dorfman this
month, followed shortly by the
Olivier and the Lyttelton. It will
be supplemented by always-on
audio description for visually
impaired customers by April
2019.
The National Theatre's
experiment marks yet another
way augmented reality, or AR, is
beginning to infiltrate everyday
life. Unlike virtual reality, in
which a headset envelops a
viewer in a computer-generated
world, AR acts as an
intermediary, showing digitally
rendered images -- think
Pokemon Go critters or
Snapchat filters -- over the real-
life scene showing on your
phone or a pair of geared-up
glasses. Apple , Google ,
Microsoft and others are taking
the plunge.
In contrast with VR headsets ,
Epson's augmented reality
smart glasses are light and
discreet enough to be
comfortable throughout a
performance, as I discovered
while watching a short clip
from sold-out show
"Mosquitoes," featuring Olivia
Colman and Olivia Williams.
Wearers have the option of
changing the positioning, size
and color of the captions to
suit their own preferences.
Epson's smart glasses will use
augmented reality to show
captions to theatergoers.
Adrian Dennis/Getty Images
The National Theatre already
has the ability to set up
caption screens, and it sets
aside a block of seats with a
view of them. But it struck me
while I was watching the
performance how frustrating it
must be to have the captions
fixed in one place, which
demands that you look away
from the on-stage action in
order to read the text. Now,
though, with Epson glasses
keeping the subtitles well
within my field of vision at all
times, it was possible to move
my head and eyes to follow
every nuance of the actors'
performances without having to
sacrifice any opportunity to
read the captions.
It was easy to see how this
might dramatically alter
someone's enjoyment of the
show, but rather than taking a
journalist's word for it, the
National Theatre will be relying
on its hard-of-hearing
customers to tell them whether
the system works for them.
Jenny Sealey, CEO and artistic
director of the accessibility-
focused Graeae Theatre
Company, and a regular at the
National, said that as someone
who's hard of hearing, she's
intrigued to try the glasses out.
"I attend captioned
productions but find it
frustrating because the
captioning box is often
positioned far away to the side
of the stage, which, when you
are watching a show on the
Olivier stage, means you really
do miss out on the action, or
sometimes they are placed too
high up, so it is uncomfortable
to look at," she said. "There are
also only one or two captioned
shows per run, which gives me
limited choice, which is deeply
frustrating."
When the glasses are available
for every performance, said
Sealey, it will be
"revolutionary."
The pilot is set to run for the
next year, during which the
theater will provide participant
feedback to Epson to refine
both the hardware and the
software. "By October 2018 we'll
be in a position to provide a
really accurate, really robust
system that's always on," said
Suffolk.
0 comments:
Post a Comment