In light of Sony’s recent announcement of its HMZ – a personal, wearable 3D theatre – it seems the sky’s the limit when it comes to technological developments in the movie and home entertainment business. But it’s developments like this that give hope to accessible cinema fans of what the future holds in terms of new technologies for accessing captions and audio description.
The first slide presented was of actor Tom Hanks wearing a prototype of the glasses at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009. This first generation of glasses was for text only in cinemas. The next generation of glasses can display images and send audio, and Fiddian suggests has the possibilities of being used as user interfaces for mobile phones.
The innovative technology, dubbed ‘Media Access Mobile’, provides synchronised text in any combination of languages, all provided simultaneously over a WiFi network and displayed on iPod Touches provide to visitors onsite.
Festival Director Rick Randall affirms that “The City of Melbourne Triennial Funding signifies an unequivocal expression of confidence in the Festival. This grant provides invaluable support for the festival to respond to the aspirations of people with a disability to participate in screen culture as creators and consumers.”
