Theatre-goers with hearing loss to benefit from new schemes for arts

Theatre staff are to be trained in improving access for deaf people and those with hearing difficulties.

It is part of a project to improve access to venues in the capital including museums and galleries.

Charity Stagetext has been awarded funding by the City of London Corporation to make the arts more inclusive.

They will use the money to expand the services they provide such as captioning and live subtitling.

The National Theatre has also announced a pilot scheme for “smart glasses” that enable the wearer to read captions for performances. More than a million Londoners will experience hearing loss by 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Such theatres as the National and the Barbican — where the audience will be able to enjoy captioned performances of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus next month — already provide accessible shows. Captions are similar to TV subtitles — the actors’ words appear on a special screen next to the stage.

Stagetext chief executive Melanie Sharpe said: “We want to make sure anyone can go to a theatre, a museum, or a gallery and share in the same cultural experience as anyone else.”