New Zealand’s blind and low-vision opera fans will be the first in the world to have access to braille surtitles, designed to enrich their experience of a live performance without the interference of audio descriptions. Opera companies around the world regularly use surtitles – where lyrics or scripts are translated into other languages and published on screens during a live performance – to give audiences a deeper understanding of what is being said or sung on stage, in real time. Until now, the primary option for vision-impaired operagoers to understand the opera text has been through audio descriptions, which can interfere with the music.
NZ Opera’s general director, Brad Cohen, developed the technology alongside his company contexts.live. It sends braille surtitles to a user’s personal braille-reading machine at the same time as the sighted audience is reading the translations on screen.
View image in fullscreen Brad Cohen: ‘For us this is a really important step in levelling the playing field.’ Photograph: Andi Crown Photography Cohen believes the technology is a world first and could change the way vision-impaired operagoers connect with a performance. “Blind and low-vision patrons have always been at a disadvantage – they haven’t had the same experiences as the rest of the room was having,” Cohen said.
“For us this is a really important step in levelling the playing field, giving them the same experience and same text as the rest of the audience.
