Beginning with Wicked For Good, a newly-invented pair of glasses will allow visitors to Odeon cinemas to watch their movies with subtitles. A multiplex manager once told me that the most complaints he’d had for a screening in a given year was for a captioned showing of a Marvel film. In spite of being widely ... Subtitles in cinema | Odeon and Universal rolling out new technology in 14 cinemas
Beginning with Wicked For Good, a newly-invented pair of glasses will allow visitors to Odeon cinemas to watch their movies with subtitles.
A multiplex manager once told me that the most complaints he’d had for a screening in a given year was for a captioned showing of a Marvel film. In spite of being widely advertised as featuring subtitles for the hard of hearing, people piled in, and demanded a refund when subtitles appeared.
It’s staggering really, especially given how limited the options are for those looking for captioned screenings.
Still, here’s a hugely welcome piece of positive news. Across 14 of its multiplexes, Odeon is to introduce a piece of technology called Watchword.
These are a pair of glasses which, once fully rolled out, will mean that any screening of a given film will be available to watch with subtitles. The first film to benefit from this will be Wicked For Good, which arrives in cinemas on 21st November.
The technology has come about thanks to the non-profit organisation Built For Good, which in turn has been supported by the UK Cinema Association. In the words of the official announcement, which you can read here, the glasses use “a proprietary glasses-based solution to allow those requiring captions the ability to watch any film in any screen.
“This ground-breaking technology in particular reduces the need for deaf and hard of hearing audience members to limit their cinema visits to specific open captioned screenings.”
It’s a welcome initiative. The initial 14 sites chosen for the rollout range from London and Bournemouth, to Dundee and Liverpool. There’s still a long way to go, but this is a promising development and a crucial step towards all cinemas offering accessibility of this kind.
More as we hear it, but a warm round of applause to all who made this happen.
