STAGETEXT was founded in 2000 to provide captioning services for deaf patrons at theaters in London. They have since expanded to provide captioning and speech-to-text services at museums, galleries, and other cultural venues. STAGETEXT works with venues to set up their own captioning systems through equipment, training, and technology. Captioning benefits the over 10 million deaf, hard of hearing, elderly, ESL, and students in the UK. Venues can choose to outsource to STAGETEXT, hire their own captioners, or use speech-to-text for unscripted events. STAGETEXT promotes accessibility through a variety of captioning options.

1. Making every word count
Tabitha Allum, Chief Executive
tabitha@stagetext.org

2. Background to STAGETEXT:
• Founded in 2000 following trip to London by some
deaf New Yorkers where they brought captioning
with them
• 5 of our 10 Trustees and 2 of our 6 staff are deaf,
deafened or hard of hearing
• Currently receive regular funding from Arts Council
England but also make a charge to theatres,
museums and galleries
• Started in theatre, now expanding to other places
like museums and galleries

3. What does STAGETEXT do?:
• Deliver captioned performances in theatres and
speech-to-text transcribed talks in museums,
galleries and other cultural venues
• Help theatres set up their own captioning
services by advising them on equipment and
training local people as captioners
• Develop technology to widen and improve the
audience experience
• Promote the service to audiences

4. Why captioning?

5. Why captioning?

6. The audience for captioning:
• UK’s 10m deaf, deafened and hard of hearing
people
• 55% of over 60s and 71% of over 70s have agerelated deafness
• Hearing people who don’t hear so well any more
• People studying the play or topic
• People who don’t have English as their first
language

7. Captioning for theatre:
• Captioner is trained – levels of grammar and
punctuation are assessed before training
• Captioner receives electronic script and DVD
• Captioner prepares the text so it mirrors the way
the actors deliver their lines
• Includes names of characters and descriptions of
music and sound effects
• Captioner outputs text live

9. Speech-to-text for talks and unscripted
performances:
• Use a stenographer or Palantypist
• What is being said is transcribed using a special
keyboard and a phonetic shorthand software
programme
• The STTR doesn’t need a script in advance, but does
need all proper nouns so that the text is accurately
spelt
• Text is displayed on the same screen as the slides, or
on a separate screen

10. Open captioning in theatre via LED displays:
Royal Court Theatre
Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man

11. Open captioning in theatre via plasma/LCD and
projection:
The Captioning Studio, Australia
Tin Bath Theatre

12. Closed captioning in theatre:
Fuel: Going Dark at the Young
Vic
Airscript in the West End

13. The options:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Outsource to STAGETEXT
Buy/share/borrow equipment
For theatre: hire captioner or train your own?
For unscripted events: STTR or revoicer?
Paid or volunteers?
Get together with other venues if you’re a
receiving venue and caption the whole tour
• Caption the tour if you’re a touring company
and share the costs

14. Thank you for listening
tabitha@stagetext.org
www.stagetext.org