Cinema and the Arts

NCAM's guide to digital cinema access

Major American access organisation, the National Center for Accessible Media (part of WGBH), has posted a comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) guide covering digital cinema and access. Whilst NCAM is the creator and distributor of the Rear Window closed captioning system, the FAQ covers all of the caption and audio description play options.

One of the main points made is that captions are provided in both open and closed form for digital cinema and also work with new technology such as 3D cinema. For the full range of information you can access the FAQ by visiting the National Center for Accessible Media website.

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New cinema access system moves to development phase

SightCine, a Los Angeles based start-up company, has secured development funding to create a prototype of its caption glasses concept. The idea is that the captions are displayed on the screen but are only visible to people wearing the glasses.

There is not much detail in exactly how the glasses work, but other systems using glasses have been developed before. In February 2007 an emerging technologies demonstration was showcased at a cinema in Washington DC. This was reported in Winter 2007 issue of The Media Access Report (“R&D For Cinema Captioning Systems”, p16).

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