- Film and TV should provide high-quality captions to give Deaf audiences an equivalent experience to hearing people
- Research found Deaf audiences felt excluded from the cinematic experience due to poor quality, missing or lagging captions
- A team from the University of Sheffield, and Paper, a Sheffield research and design company, have published guidelines highlighting commercial opportunities for the media industry to improve the accessibility of entertainment
Improved captioning in the film industry could make watching film and TV more accessible and engaging for the Deaf community, according to new guidance published by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield-based research and design studio, Paper.
Members of the Deaf community, who have been Deaf all of their lives and use British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language, took part in a research project which asked them about their experiences of watching films.
The team found that poor captioning stopped Deaf audiences effectively experiencing filmmaking techniques like suspense in storylines, which led to them feeling excluded from the cinematic experience.
The project has resulted in a new film 'Rethinking Subtitles' and six new guidelines for the media industry, highlighting the commercially viable opportunities that improve the accessibility of films and TV programmes for Deaf audiences.
