UK cinemas are now prioritizing deaf audiences with a new initiative that allows deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing cinemagoers to watch captioned films one day before their general release. This groundbreaking move comes from Paramount Pictures UK and kicks off with the robot animation film Transformers One on October 10th. Subtitled screenings of Paramount’s upcoming films, such as Gladiator II and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, will follow in the coming months.
Rebecca Mansell, CEO of the British Deaf Association, praised the initiative, noting that deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing audiences often struggle to attend subtitled film showings due to inconvenient scheduling. “It fits in with the cinema’s needs, but not necessarily when the Deaf community want to go,” she said. “The deaf community always feels they are the last to know, the last to watch something, the last for everything. And now we’re going to be the first. It’s definitely a really exciting moment.”
Mansell also highlighted that subtitles are gaining popularity among younger generations. “60% of young people prefer watching things with subtitles,” she said. “I think before, people viewed them as being in the way or ruining the image. And now they’re a lot more accepted and a lot more normalized.”
According to the British Deaf Association, around 18 million people in the UK are registered as deaf, deafened, or hard of hearing. Paramount has also been conducting deaf awareness training with cinema managers and staff in UK cities to improve communication with customers. Yvonne Cobb, a TV presenter and celebrity ambassador for the British Deaf Association, was running the training at a large cinema in central London’s Leicester Square this week. She noted that the three-hour training session wasn’t enough for staff to become fluent in British Sign Language, but workers were able to learn basic signs, how to interact with deaf customers, and what not to do.
“We taught the staff how to say the number of which screen it’s in, and also some greeting signs as well — for example ‘how are you?’” said Cobb, who is a qualified British Sign Language teacher. Staff were also taught how to spell with their fingers to indicate the name of the movie.
