A new initiative will allow UK deaf audiences to see captioned films before general release

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Louise Thomas

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For once, deaf audiences are being prioritized at U.K. cinemas.

Paramount Pictures UK will be showing their movies with captions the day before general release, meaning deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers across the country will be able to watch them first.

The distributor is starting with the robot animation “Transformers One" on Oct. 10. Subtitled screenings of Paramount’s upcoming films, “Gladiator II,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and “The Smurfs Movie,” will follow over the next few months.

Rebecca Mansell, chief executive of the British Deaf Association, called the initiative ground-breaking. Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences have been struggling to attend the few available subtitled film showings because they are often scheduled at inconvenient times, she said.

“It fits in with the cinema’s needs, but not necessarily when the Deaf community want to go,” she said. “The deaf community always feel that they are the last ones to know, the last ones to watch something, the last ones for everything. And now we’re going to be the first. It’s definitely a really exciting moment.”

Around 18 million people in the U.K. are registered as deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, according to the association.

Paramount has also been running deaf awareness training with cinema managers and staff in U.K. cities so that they can better communicate 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 Wednesday.

She said 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 — for example shouting or covering one's mouth. They were also taught how to spell with their fingers to indicate the name of the movie.

“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.

Paul Johnston-Naylor, a general manager at Feltham Cineworld, completed the training on Wednesday and said that learning the British Sign Language alphabet was very useful.

“We can try and finger spell some of the names of the movies and then some of the common phrases that we would probably use in the cinema industry, to help the customer navigate their way through the cinema, buy their popcorn, go and sit in a screen and find their seats," he said.

Cobb even invented a new sign for “Transformers One" that was inspired by the robot characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Mansell also notes that subtitles are becoming increasingly popular with younger generations.

“60% of young people prefer watching things with subtitles," she said. "I think before, people view them as being in the way or ruining the image. And now they’re a lot more accepted and a lot more normalized.”