Smart glasses are being tried by the National Theatre in an attempt to make performances accessible to the hearing and visually impaired.
They’re calling it a ‘mobile phone on your face’. Basically it will unobtrusively project captions which have been synchronised with the dialogue of plays and it will be available at all three of its theatres within a year.
The National Theatre’s team are also working on a ‘piece of kit’ that will deliver seamless audio-descriptions of events on stage for visually impaired audience members. Mr. Rufus Norris, the theatre’s artistic director, said, “the possibilities are endless .. effectively it is a mobile phone on your face and we are using a very small portion of what it can do.”