Talking pictures

Transport for all magazine. London's accessible travel magazine. Winter 2004.

David Semple visits the Wimbledon Odeon with a profoundly deaf woman, and discovers how new technology can make cinema accessible for all.

Going out to the movies can be a wonderful way to forget all your worries for a while. And Afet Enver has more to forget than most people. She spent much of 2003 battling with a heart complaint and septicaemia.

As a result of these, both her legs were amputated and she became profoundly deaf. She now has prosthetic limbs, but in many ways suddenly becoming deaf was a bigger blow: “It’s been difficult adjusting from being someone who can hear, to someone who can’t. If people in the room are laughing, they have to very slowly explain the joke to me, so I can lip-read. Often I can’t join in with a conversation and I get bored.”

If someone in Afet’s situation had gone to the cinema 80 years ago, they would have been able to enjoy it. Those were the days of the silent movies, with the dialogue on captions. But when the talkies came along, cinema suddenly became inaccessible to those who couldn’t hear. But all that looks likely to change this year, as cinemas invest in new digital technology, which will enable deaf people to see the dialogue, and blind people to hear the action.

Yes, people can now hear the action! A small number of cinemas-ten in the London area-now have technology which beams subtitles onto the screen for the benefit of deaf people, and broadcasts a special audio commentary into sets of headphones to fill in visual details for blind customers. We went to Wimbledon to see how it all works.

It was a miserable grey day when we arrived at the Wimbledon Odeon. Afet and her mum, Munnever, had spent an hour in traffic, and really needed something to cheer them up. ‘Fanatical about film’ said a sign outside, whilst a poster in the foyer boasted that they had twelve screens. But how much choice did they offer disabled moviegoers?

The omens were good-we entered the cinema from street level, and a lift large enough for any mobility scooter took us to the box office. There, a lady asked if we would like headphones-I decided to take advantage and try them out. The assistant manager showed us to our seats.

We settled down in the wheelchair bay, which it must be said, offers the best seats in the house. Because Afet lost a lot of fatty tissue when she was in her coma, many seats, including most taxis, can be uncomfortable. But she did wriggle her way into an Odeon chair and agreed-it’s a very comfy place to park your bum for two hours.

And then it began-the romantic comedy ‘Love Actually’. I put on my pair of headphones, closed my eyes, and listened to the audio description. It was a little bit like listening to a sports commentary on the radio-you could hear the film just like anybody else, but a voice in the headphones filled in the things you couldn’t see.

Hunky, blue eyed Mark opens the door to Juliet, who is holding a cake box.” Occasionally the commentary promised so much, I had to open my eyes and peek: “John stands behind bare-breasted Judy and begins to thrust his pelvis

Afterwards, I spoke to chief technician Lee Burns about how the technology works. He explained that the subtitles are projected onto the screen from a separate projector. In the olden days, if a film was subtitled, it meant that the captions were printed on the reel of film and every single showing would be subtitled. With this new system, the cinema can turn the subtitles on and off, a bit like CEEFAX. So not all screenings will have them. Because, as Lee explained, some people have a problem with the written word.

“There are some people who don’t like subtitles on the screen, full stop. We do advertise screenings with subtitles, so if people don’t want to see it with subtitles, they can perhaps go to a later showing, and with a cinema this size we would sometimes have two going on simultaneously. But the great thing with our new audio description is you can be sitting there with your headphones, and no-one is any the wiser. So if we have audio described facilities for a particular screen, we offer it at that screen for every single performance. At the moment we don’t have it on all twelve screens here, but we hope to, in time. We’re beginning to get quite a few regulars.”

Is Afet likely to become a regular? “ Yes please!” she said. “I’d definitely do it again, now I know there are subtitled films out there.” And the film itself struck a chord. “I found it really enjoyable, and funny, and heart-warming. And I also liked the message. Everybody needs love, and everyone can find love. And I enjoyed it because for the first time since I became deaf, I sat in a room full of people, and when they were laughing, I laughed with them. I could understand it, and not get bored, and not feel an outcast.”

However, while cinemas have this technology, do they actually use it? Sadly, not enough. Some cinemas only show subtitled films on a Monday, or off-peak. The Odeon chain is by far the best, showing a range of subtitled films at different times of day. We hope that the Disability Discrimination Act (The DDA) will force all cinemas to provide more facilities. We invite all our readers to contact their local cinemas and ask them to provide digital facilities. It costs £8000 to install-the cost of an average weekend’s takings for one film. For that small price, 5% of the population will be able to laugh at the same time as anyone else.

If you have internet access, you can visit www.yourlocalcinema.com for details of subtitled screenings.

Copyright Transport for all magazine. London's accessible travel magazine. Winter 2004.

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