Media Release

19 August 2011

The Captioning Studio Wins National Captioning Award For GoTheatrical! Theatre Captioning

The Captioning Studio has been awarded the Best Event Captioning in Australia Award for its GoTheatrical! Theatre Captioning service at the Deafness Forum 2011 National Captioning Awards held in Sydney last night.

“We are thrilled to have received this prestigious Award”, says Nari Jennings, co-founder of The Captioning Studio. “This achievement is without doubt a team effort between ourselves and the Australian venues offering GoTheatrical! theatre captioning for their patrons. We work with an inspiring team of venues and theatre companies who are as passionate as we are about captioning inclusion for people with a hearing loss!”

With 4.5 million Australians having a hearing loss, The Captioning Studio has recently launched its Inclusion In The Arts Through Captioning campaign to promote awareness of the existence of the service. “While to date we have been promoting theatre captioning to members of deaf and hearing impaired organisations, we have realised that there are still millions of Australians who simply don’t know that the theatre captioning service is available and they are missing out on some fantastic theatre performances as a result”, said Nari.

As a part of this awareness campaign, a Theatre Captioning poster has been designed. Australian Hearing, one of the largest hearing service providers in the world, is distributing the poster to its branches for display, as is the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre. The Returned & Services League of Australia is also showing their support, promoting the service on their various websites and distributing information to their membership. The free newspaper ‘The Senior’ has also published an article about theatre captioning which has generated a lot of interest from the public. Electrical retailer Harvey Norman is showing its support by sponsoring some Caption Equipment Kits, comprising 50″ plasmas and laptops, enabling venues to provide theatre captioning with no cost for equipment.

“This is just the beginning of what we believe will be an absolute revolution in the way live theatre is accessed by people in Australia. As the population ages, we will see even greater numbers of people who will be depending on captioning for their inclusion in the theatrical experience”, says Nari.

The Deafness Forum Captioning Awards were held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney last night. Other Award Winners were:

Roma Wood Community Award: Wayne Hawkins

Best DVD Captioning: Warner Home Movies

Most Consistent Use of Captions: Javier Arriaga

Best Promotion of Captioning: Ai-Media

Best TV Captioning Pay TV: Fox Sports for Hyundai A-League

Best New Captioning Initiative: ABC iView and the Australian Communications Exchange

Best Free to Air TV captioning: Seven Network

Members’ Choice: ABC iView

For More Details, Contact:

Nari Jennings

E: Nari.jennings@captioningstudio.com