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The UK Cinema Association (UKCA) has launched a fund to encourage innovations in the area of subtitling for people with hearing loss.
It is estimated that 11 million UK poeple experience hearing loss, which is around one in six people. This number is expected to rise to one in five by 2025.
The UKCA has aimed to make cinema more accessible for those with hearing loss by tracking the development of 'closed caption' subttile systems, where subtitles are only seen by individual audience members via specially-adapted glasses or personal screens. These devices have been slow to take-off however, leading to the creation of the fund.
The UKCA hopes the fund will "cast the net of potential partners further than just the cinema sector to involve those working in the wider technology and academic sectors’.
The fund has been created in partnership with Action on Hearing Loss, the UK's largest charity for people with hearing loss. £75.000 will be distributed by the fund to innovative projects, across two phases.
The first phase offers a £5,000 individual limit, with the total allocated being £2,500. Those who complete this phase will then be eligible to apply for a second round of funding, which offers a total of £50,000, with a £25,000 per-project limit.
The UKCA's ideal solution:
- Allow people to have an integrated cinema experience with the general public
- Be easy to use for both the venue and user
- Be financially viable for benues and to install and use
- Be compatible with existing cinema infrastructure
Successful applicants to the fund are able to retain Intellectual Property rights to their product, with Action on Hearing Loss providing support to inventors in finding commercial partners if they are able to indentify a suitable product.
The first phase of grants will be awarded in December 2018, with both phases running throughout 2019 before a showcase event in November of that year.
The deadline to enter is 28 September,. For more information about the fund, and to enter, click here to visit the UKCA's website.