When Cynthia Erivo donned the quirky, infinity symbol-shaped glasses as Elphaba in Wicked, it sparked a fashion trend among the movie's fanbase. Now, ahead of the release of its sequel, Wicked: For Good, we might see even more unconventional spectacles in cinemas the second time around, in the form of smart captions glasses available for deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers.
Known as WatchWord and developed by the tech company Built for Good, the devices will be made available for screenings in 14 ODEON cinemas in the UK (out of the more than 100 venues in total as it's still in a trial phase), when the movie arrives in cinemas this November.
I will always support freedom of choice in principle, especially when it moves us deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers in the direction of being able to enjoy any screening (a privilege enjoyed by our hearing peers), but this is access via a postcode lottery. The entirety of Wales has to be able to get to Odeon's Bridgend cinema, for example.
(Update: a WatchWord spokesman says that there are 14 other independent cinemas making use of the technology, including Gwyn Hall in Neath.)
This isn't the first time these glasses have been made available in Odeon cinemas, either. I tried them out in Milton Keynes last year for a screening of Wicked Little Letters, only for the glasses to fail once the movie started, resulting in my abandoning the cinema trip altogether. WatchWord say this was due to a technical error on the part of the cinema, not the glasses.
The tech itself is bulky for pre-existing glasses wearers, to the extent that I had to press the lenses into my face in order to bring the text projections shown within my glasses into focus – not practical for a 100-minute movie.
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But the biggest issue is around the attention and stares the glasses receive from others, even if they do allow for greater customisation of the captions than their 'burned-in' counterparts. Unlike the discretion of open-captioned screenings, where those who need the access provision don't make themselves known, sitting in a cinema wearing this technology does come with an air of being seen as 'different' – painfully ironic when one of Wicked's main themes is around the idea of 'otherness'.
There's also the fact that the glasses weren't all that 'popular' after their first trial in Derby back in March 2024 (pun very much intended). A survey of participants found 41 per cent preferred open captions over WatchWord, with this being the "prevailing view".
Then again, almost three quarters (74 per cent) strongly agreed they would like to wear the glasses again at other screenings, and people said they would visit the cinema three times as often if they were readily available.
And when it comes to it, more than 80 per cent said they strongly agreed they would rather use the subtitles glasses instead of not attending a screening at all, should an open caption screening not be available at an appropriate time. (Cinemas still schedule captioned screenings for a random weekday afternoon, as if deaf people don't have jobs like everyone else.)
But why not do both? We've already seen brilliant initiatives whereby previews are being offered to deaf movie fans with open captions, helping them join the conversation around the Next Big Thing at the same time as everyone else. Surely more open captioned screenings are necessary to cover the many Odeon cinemas where this technology won't be available, too?
Failing to do this would only partly address the long-standing problem around a lack of captioned screenings, by creating an entirely different problem altogether.
Are the glasses a 'good' step forward? Sure. But if the industry goes even further in its support for deaf and hard of hearing people by widening access to captions, then it could be wonderful.
Wicked: For Good is released in cinemas on 21 November. The full list of WatchWord sites for its release can be found here.
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