There’s a funny thing on the internet that lets people in public service jobs know how to deal with those who are disabled – those poor disabled people who have no ability to use Braille or sign language in this case!
“Sighted people tend to be very proud and will not ask directly for assistance. Be gentle, yet firm.”
“Calmly alert the sighted person to his or her surroundings by speaking slowly, in a normal tone of voice. There is no need to raise your voice when addressing a sighted person.”
OK; jokes aside. We are in a service business, and we get a lot of practice dealing with people who can walk strait to the proper line without assistance, but we don’t get a lot of practice dealing with people who need different kinds of assistance.
Does that blind person get a benefit from using Closed Caption equipment? Uhm…probably not. Audio Description equipment? Yes! Probably, yes. Should you ask? Good idea.
There are a couple good reasons to ask. One, it helps with the first basic communication point: everyone gets to know that they are being paid attention to. Two, people jump to the wrong conclusion sometimes. I may think that you are looking at your ticket to find the auditorium number, but you are looking to see if you have the right date.
When someone needs to use the Accessibility Equipment, they may think that
you are an expert and that
the equipment has been tested recently and that
the batteries are fully charged and that
the projectionist has made the playlist perfectly, including the captions and narration tracks and that
the accessibility hardware in the projection booth is turned on and tested
And, of course you are an expert…or want to be…but no matter how hard you study the equipment you don’t seem to get enough practice. And you are never around on SlowTuesday when the practice sessions are.
<Work in Progress – tell us your stories until we get this done…>
Tips for Working with People (clients and workmates) with Specific Needs
Follow the tips below when working with people with specific needs:
Use common sense. Remember a client or workmate is a person first, the specific need comes second.
Avoid being patronizing. Show the person the same courtesy and respect you expect to receive from others.
Be considerate and patient. Try to anticipate what the person’s needs might be, without being too presumptive or obsequious. Offer assistance if needed without forcing yourself on them.
Be patient if he or she needs more time to communicate or accomplish a task.
Communicate with the person. Some people with specific needs may have an assistant or companion with them. Look at and speak directly to the person, rather than the assistant.
Make certain that your posted signs help the person with specific needs to find the most accessible way to get to the room where they can get the service they require.
Working with People with Limited Mobility
When working with people with mobility issues:
Do not push or touch a person’s wheelchair without his or her consent. People using adaptive equipment often consider the equipment as part of their personal space.
Ask before helping. Grabbing a person’s elbow may throw the person off balance. A person with mobility impairments might lean on a door while opening it. Quickly opening the door may cause the person to fall.
Secure mats, rugs, and cords to the floor or move them out of the way. This will help prevent tripping.
Keep floors dry.
Keep ramps and wheelchair accessible doors unlocked and free of clutter.
Working with People with Speech or Hearing Impairments
When working with people with speech difficulties or who are deaf or hard of hearing:
Allow a person who cannot speak to write his or her request. Read the statement or request out loud.
Follow the person’s cues. This will help to determine whether speaking, gestures, or writing is the most effective method of communication.
If speaking, speak calmly, slowly, and directly to the person. Do not shout. Your facial expressions, gestures, and body movements help in understanding. Face the person at all times.
Rephrase, rather than repeat, sentences that the person does not understand.
Working with People Who are Blind or Visually Impaired
When working with people with speech difficulties or who are blind or partially sighted:
Identify yourself as a cinema employee. Do this as soon as you come in contact with the patron. Offer your arm, rather than taking the person’s arm when assisting. Help the person avoid obstacles in the path of travel by being specific when giving verbal directions.
If the person has a service animal, walk on the opposite side of the person, away from the service animal . Do not pet or interact with the service animal without the owner’s permission.
Describe what you are doing as you are doing it. If walking away from a person who is blind or partially sighted, let him or her know. This prevents the situation where they continue talking to no one.
Before the first SMTPE D-Cinema standards hit publication – back in 2008 – Post Production people began talking about workflows that would start with the DCinema Package as the mezzanine format then break those into anything else that someone needed for distribution on their channel.
That discussion worked its way independently of SMPTE for a while, then started the process that eventually turned into the ST 2067 – Interoperable Master Format (IMF), which today has its own website that makes these tools available for anyone to dig in and get it right.
It includes not only a suite of documents, but the normative references to those documents.
Modern logic says that since these documents are required to correctly implement these ideas and standards, then interface with other group’s equipment and implementations, they need to be available to the very people who can’t afford to get them all. SMPTE experimented with dozens of documents during the Covid times, and this implementation of the IMF documents is an advancement of that concept.
The National Association of Theatre Owners today announced the formation of The Cinema Foundation. The new organization—a donor-supported 501(c)(3) charitable non-profits—dedicated to promoting the essential cinema exhibition industry by developing future diverse workforces and growing moviegoing communities through research, education, and philanthropy.
The Cinema Foundation expands on NATO’s mission by adding new participants, including technology companies, food and beverage leaders, members of the creative community, and other individuals and companies that share in our vision and passion for the future of cinema.
The Cinema Foundation’s founding Board of Directors draws members from across the industry, including Jackie Brenneman (NATO), President; Tori A. Baker (Salt Lake Film Society), Vice President; Brian Schultz (Look Cinemas), Secretary; Eduardo Acuna (Cinépolis Americas), Treasurer; and Directors Adam Cassels (Cinionic); Michelle Maddalena (Dolby Laboratories); and Katherine Twells (The Coca-Cola Company).
“The future of the cinema industry is being determined right now,” said The Cinema Foundation President, Jackie Brenneman. “The Cinema Foundation is designed to bring together key industry stakeholders from business, technology, and the creative community to be the leading voice in what that future will be.”
Currently in its initial fundraising and hiring phase, the key priorities of The Cinema Foundation include:
Cinema Careers, Education and Diversity: Promoting the industry as a great place to work via recruitment campaigns, training programs, and opportunities for career growth.
Moviegoing Promotion and Creative Community Involvement: Building on NATO’s relationships with the creative community to grow audiences, promote the industry and diversify content options.
Center for Innovation and Technology: The Center will work to ensure the industry’s technology is future ready and meets standards that help key stakeholders including filmmakers, manufacturers and exhibitors while also avoiding costly barriers that do not enhance the theatrical experience.
Industry Data and Research: Data will be the key to effective industry messaging, promotion and innovation going forward and The Foundation will prioritize a data-based approach across all initiatives.
Industry Charities: Working with existing industry charities to expand their impact.
“I firmly believe in The Cinema Foundation and its important role in contributing to the magic of moviegoing,” said Brian Schultz of Look Cinemas. “The Foundation will create dynamic employment opportunities for the industry’s future workforce and develop programs that ensure a healthy exhibition industry that brings economic and cultural vibrancy to communities everywhere.”
Adam Cassels, of Cinionic, added, “Our industry has a long heritage of innovation, connecting a diverse ecosystem to further the cinematic experience. The Cinema Foundation creates a space to continue innovating and collaborating to meet the needs of moviegoers, the creative community, and cinema professionals across the exhibition landscape.”
Movies at the cinema, a cultural phenomena that involves a blend of technology and groups of people, is taking one more step into Inclusiveness. The imperfect solutions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Blind and Partially Sighted are more and more part of every cinema facility – either special glasses that present words in mid-air or equipment that places words on at the end of bendable post, and earphones that transmit either a special enhanced (mono) dialog track or a different mono track that includes a narrator who describes the action. [At right: One of two brands of Closed Caption reading devices.]
Work is now nearing completion on a required new set of technologies that will help include a new group of people into the rich cultural experiences of movie-going. The tools being added are for those who use sign language to communicate. As has been common for the inclusion path, compliance with government requirements are the driving force. This time the requirement comes from Brazil, via a “Normative Instruction” that by 2018 (the time schedule has since been delayed) every commercial movie theater in Brazil must be equipped with assistive technology that guarantees the services of subtitling, descriptive subtitling, audio description and Libras.
Libras (Lingua Brasileira de Sinaisis) is the acronym for the Brazilian version of sign language for their deaf community. Libras is an official language of Brazil, used by a segment of the population estimated at 5%. The various technology tools to fulfil the sign language requirements are part of the evolving accessibility landscape. In this case, as often has happened, an entrepreneur who devised a cell phone app was first to market – by the time that the rules were formalized, cell phones belonging to the individual were not allowed to be part of the solution.
The option of using cell phones seems like a logical choice at first glance, but there are several problems with their use in a dark cinema theatre. They have never been found acceptable for other in-theatre uses, and this use case is no exception. The light that they emit is not designed to be restricted to just that one audience member (the closed caption device above does restrict the viewing angle and stray light), so it isn’t just a bother for the people in the immediate vicinity – phone light actually decreases perceived screen contrast for anyone getting a dose in their field of vision. Cell phones also don’t handle the script securely, which is a requirement of the studios which are obligated to protect the copyrights of the artists whose work they are distributing. And, of course, phones have a camera pointing at the screen – a huge problem for piracy concerns.
The fact is, there are problems with each of the various accessibility equipment offerings.
Accessibility equipment users generally don’t give 5 Stars for the choices they’ve been given, for many and varied reasons. Some of the technology – such as the device above which fits into the seat cup holder – requires the user to constantly re-focus, back-and-forth from the distant screen to the close foreground words illuminated in the special box mounted on a bendable stem. Another choice – somewhat better – is a pair of specialized glasses that present the words seemingly in mid-air with a choice of distance. While these are easier on the eyes if one holds their head in a single position, the words move around as one moves their head. Laughter causes the words to bounce. Words go sideways and in front of the action if you place your head on your neighbor’s shoulder.
[This brief review is part of a litany of credible issues, best to be reviewed in another article. It isn’t only a one-sided issue either – exhibitors point out that the equipment is expensive to buy, losses are often disproportionate to their use, and manufacturers point out that the amount of income derived doesn’t support continuous development of new ideas.)]
These (and other) technology solutions are often considered to be attempts to avoid the most simple alternative – putting the words on the screen in what is called “Open Caption”. OC is the absolute favorite of the accessibility audience. Secure, pristine, on the same focal plane, and importantly, all audience members are treated the same – no need to stand in line then be dragging around special equipment while your peers are chatting up somewhere else. But since words on screen haven’t been widely used since shortly after ‘talkies’ became common, the general audience aren’t used to them and many fear they would vehemently object. Attempts to schedule special open screening times haven’t worked in the past for various reasons.
And while open caption might be the first choice for many, it isn’t necessarily the best choice for a child, for example. Imagine the child who has been trained in sign language longer than s/he has been learning to read, who certainly can’t read as fast as those words speeding by in the new Incredibles movie. But signing? …probably better.
Sign language has been used for years on stage, or alongside public servants during announcements, or on the TV or computer screen. So in the cinema it is the next logical step. And just in time, as the studios and manufacturing technology teams are able to jump on the project when many new enabling components are available and tested and able to be integrated into new solutions.
These include recently designed and documented synchronization tools that have gone through the SMTPE and ISO processes, which work well with the newly refined SMPTE compliant DCP (now shipping!, nearly worldwide – yet another story to be written.) These help make the security and packaging concerns of a new datastream more easily addressable within the existing standardized workflows. The question started as ‘how to get a new video stream into the package?’ After much discussion, the choice was made to include that stream as a portion of the audio stream.
There is history in using some of the 8 AES pairs for non-audio purposes (motion seat data, for example). And there are several good reasons for using an available, heretofore unused channel of a partly filled audio pair. Although the enforcement date has been moved back by the Brazilian Normalization group, the technology has progressed such that the main facilitator of movies for the studios, Deluxe, has announced their capability of handling this solution. The ISDCF has a Technical Document in development and under consideration which should help others, and smooth introduction worldwide if that should happen. [See: ISDCF Document 13 – Sign Language Video Encoding for Digital Cinema (a document under development) on the ISDCF Technical Documents web page.]
One major question remains. Where is the picture derived from? The choices are:
to have a person do the signing, or
to use the cute emoticon-style of a computer-derived avatar.
Choice one requires a person to record the signs as part of the post-production process, just as sub-titling or dubbing is done in a language that is different from the original. Of course, translating the final script of the edited movie can only be done at the very last stage of post, and like dubbing requires an actor with a particular set of skills who has to do the work, which then still has to be edited to perfection and approved and QC’d – all before the movie is released.
An avatar still requires that translation. But the tool picks words from the translation, matches them to a dictionary of sign avatars, and presents them on the screen that is placed in front of the user. If there is no avatar for that word or concept, then the word is spelled out, which is what is the common practice in live situations.
There has been a lot of debate within the community about whether avatars can transmit the required nuance. After presentations from stakeholders, the adjudicating party in Brazil reached the consensus that avatars are OK to use, though videos of actors doing the signing being preferred.
The degree of nuance in signing is very well explained by the artist Christine Sun Kim in the following TED talk. She uses interesting allegories with music and other art to get her points across. In addition to explaining, she also shows how associated but slightly different ideas get conveyed using the entire body of the signer.
Christine Sun Kim at her TED talk about The Enchanting Music of Sign Language
Nuance is difficult enough to transmit well in written language. Most of us don’t have experience with avatars, except perhaps if we consider our interchanges with Siri and Alexa – there we notice that avatar-style tools only transmit a limited set of tone/emphasis/inflection nuance, if any at all. Avatar based signing is a new art that needs to express a lot of detail.
The realities of post production budgets and movie release times and other delivery issues get involved in this issue and the choices available. The situation with the most obstacles is getting all the final ingredients prepared for a day and date deadline. Fortunately, some of these packages can be sent after the main package and joined at the cinema, but either way the potential points of failure increase.
In addition to issues of time, issues of budget come into play. Documentary or small movies made, often made with a country’s film commission funds are often quite limited. Independants with small budgets may run out of credit cards without being able to pay for the talent required to have human signing. Avatars may be the only reasonable choice versus nothing.
At CinemaCon we saw the first of the two technologies presented by two different companies.
Riole® is a Brazilian company which developed a device that passes video from the DCP to a specialized color display that plays the video of the signing actor, as well as simultaneously presenting printed words. It uses SMPTE standard sync and security protocols and an IR emitter. Their cinema line also includes an audio description receiver/headphone system.
Dolby Labs also showed a system that is ready for production, which uses the avatar method. What we see on the picture at the right is a specially designed/inhibited ‘phone’ that the cinema chain can purchase locally. A media player gets input from the closed caption feed from the DCP, then matches that to a library of avatars. The signal is then broadcast via wifi to the ‘phones’. Dolby has refreshed their line of assistive technology equipment, and this will fit into that groups offerings.
Both companies state that they are working on future products/enhancements that will include the other technology, Riole working on avatars, Dolby working on videos.
There has been conjecture in the past as to whether other countries might follow with similar signing requirements. At this point that remains as conjecture. Nothing but rumors have been noted.
There are approximately 300 different sign languages in use around the world, including International Sign which is used at international gatherings. There are a lot of kids who can’t read subtitles, open or closed. Would they (and we) be better off seeing movies with their friends or waiting until the streaming release at home?
Is it because everyone is facing forward and the typical air conditioning system is pushing the air away from people’s faces?
Is it the extra cleaning cycle between each movie, some facilities spraying down each arm piece of each chair and hand-rail?
Is it the new HEPA Filters that many cinemas installed?
Is it that most people are still wearing masks? …that they were checked at the entrance for being vaccinated?
Several studies have been done, as noted in Celluloid Junkie, by UNIC, by Deadline one early in the plague’s cycle in the heavily tracked South Korea, and one later in a more general manner – both reaching the same conclusion. No One can point to an incident of Covid being traced to the cinema theater.
Riole® is a Brazilian company which developed a device that passes video from the DCP to a specialized color display that plays the video of the signing actor, as well as simultaneously presenting printed words. It uses SMPTE standard sync and security protocols and an IR emitter. Their cinema line also includes an audio description receiver/headphone system.
