LONDON -- 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 Associatio.