New York : The Gershwin Theatre, Wicked's Broadway home, will be the first venue in the world to have captioning for the deaf, audio description for the blind and a translation system available at every performance. These state-of-the-art communications tools, developed by Richard Fitzgerald of Sound Associates, Inc., have been funded in part by the National Institute For Special Need Audiences (NISNA). While each of these services has been available at other venues, WICKED will be the first show for which all three are available, making it the most accessible show anywhere.
ShowTrans (now available) is a revolutionary service that provides automated multilingual descriptive commentary of a theatrical production for the non-English speaking audience at every single performance. Better than a word-for-word translation, the system gives the patrons continual plot and dialogue information that enables them to follow the action, intention, humor and emotion of the show. At WICKED, the languages offered are Japanese, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
Audio Description for the Blind (available late February) offers blind or sight-impaired audience members a detailed description of all the visual aspects of the production, including choreography, lighting, sets and costumes. Like ShowTrans and I-Caption, it is timed perfectly to the show's cueing system.
I-Caption (now available) is a revolutionary hand-held captioning system for the deaf and hearing-impaired theatergoer. The device, approximately the size of a small PDA, displays verbatim texts of the entire show, including lyrics, announcements and show information. It is visible to the user, but is designed in such a way that it is not a distraction to those in surrounding seats.
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