There are 250.000-300.000 hearing-impaired people living in Hungary. They are missing out on countless cultural experiences, but theatre is perhaps the most painful of all. Vodafone is constantly looking for opportunities where digitalisation can benefit society. With the aid of technology, innovation and authentic feedback from the community we have found the solution - and now, hearing-imparied people can enjoy every theater play.

Let’s make the theater experience accessible for hearing-impaired persons with the help of digitalization! We use the smartphones of audience to subtitle the theater plays. The user connects to the theatre's wifi network and sees the subtitles synchronised to the play, streamed via a website. In theatres, we place phone holders on the backs of the seats, so hearing-impaired people can easily follow the play.

Hearing-impaired audiences are often unable to enjoy theatre plays: lip-reading does not work in the theatre, and the various accessibility solutions are either very expensive or require a compromise from the audience. We therefore looked for a device that is accessible to many, does not require a large investment and makes the play fully understandable and enjoyable. And that is the smartphone.

The success of the campaign was measured in terms of creating a workable solution that could be scaled up and become widely known. The first performance was a great success, with hearing-impaired audience commenting positively on the subtitling, which provided them with a high quality user experience. News of the subtitled theater performances went everywhere: more than 50 media outlets reported on the campaign. In addition to the hearing impaired, the theaters were also enthusiastic about the idea and we are working to ensure that as many subtitled performances on smartphones as possible are launched in the future.