Accessibility is good for business
Millions of potential audience members are currently excluded from enjoying live performance at your theatre.
Live theatre is a magical experience. From the classic repertoire to the latest experimental work, theatre has the power to immerse, engage and provoke reactions.
What starts as a script on a page comes alive when the words are given a voice. However, if someone cannot follow the dialogue, their experience unravels. Far from being immersed, they become excluded. And people who feel excluded don’t come back.
You’d have to get people re-engaged, people who’d written off going to the theatre because you just can’t hear anything … you need to give it another chance because this is brilliant.”
– Customer using Auracast at Everyman Cheltenham
In the UK, 10 million adults have hearing loss that would benefit from hearing assistance. That’s a lot of people who could be missing out.
Hearing devices are not enough
Hearing devices, like hearing aids and cochlear implants, make a massive difference to people with hearing loss. They make speech loud enough to hear. That’s great in a quiet environment, when people are talking to someone nearby. But hearing speech from a stage can be much harder. Even if a performer’s voice is amplified by a loudspeaker, reverberation from the auditorium muddies the sound, making it hard to understand.
Assistive listening systems help by sending clear audio directly to people’s hearing devices. This makes speech easier to understand and music sound better.
We have installed the Auracast system across all of our venues and cinemas, and have improved the accessibility offering to our customers with hearing loss. The clarity the system provides and flexibility for users to adjust the sound has been a huge benefit to Warwick Arts Centre and we continue to improve and evolve the system. Our customers can now come and see a show or see a film and hear the clarity that all audience members should get the chance to hear.”
– Technical Manager, Warwick Arts Centre