The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is Talking Birds‘ discrete tool for making performances and events accessible to d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing audience members by delivering captions direct to their own mobile devices.
“I followed brilliantly because…within Talking Birds someone had created a new way of captioning that I honestly think, with some backing, could be the next big thing…I was also seriously impressed that a small bunch of people in a low-budget performing arts group saw it as important that their show was accessible to all and deemed it necessary to devise and implement a method to make it possible.”
[The Hearing Times]
It has been developed by artists, for artists – we made the Difference Engine (named after Charles Babbage’s 1822 computer) because we wanted to give more people the chance to access experimental, outdoor, small scale or immersive performance.
We have a dedicated website for the Difference Engine where you can find out more about how it might improve accessibility for you as an audience member or a company wanting to hire a kit.
“The crucial thing about the Difference Engine is that it’s much more affordable than traditional captioning and British Sign Language, making it possible for one-off, small-scale shows to be made accessible to Deaf audiences.”
[Ruby Glaskin of Milk Presents, writing in The Stage]
Access
We try to make our work from a standpoint of universal access, because we believe that this makes the work better. We know that no single ‘access solution’ works for everyone, but we have also learned that there are a lot of things we can do, or put in place around our work, which will make it more open and enjoyable for audiences and for ourselves.
We think that improving accessibility is a conversation best had by the creative team at the beginning of the process of making a piece of work. It never really succeeds if it is only thought about by the marketing department (if there *is* a marketing department…) once the show is nearly ready to open – and, in any case, artists are almost always those best placed to come up with creative access solutions.
Our most famous access innovation is probably the Difference Engine – which delivers captioning and audio description to audience’s mobile devices. It is really useful in a lot of situations, particularly where space or funds prevent some of the more conventional access tools being used, but it is of course only one part of making an event accessible.
Talking Birds is a partner on the Artists Manifesto for Access, created by Coventry artists in collaboration with Dan Thompson as part of Access Coventry, an initiative aimed at equipping artists in the city to more meaningfully implement access into their practice. Access Coventry, was managed by Shoot Festival with support from Talking Birds on behalf of F13 and has subsequently grown into the Coventry Access Consortium, which we plan to develop collectively in the next three years, building on the manifesto.
“My husband and I saw Made in India/Britain last night at the Soho Theatre and used the Difference Engine app on our phone to access the captions. We thought the system worked really well, was easy to use and the captions were clear and synchronised well with the voice over. We will be writing to the National Theatre to suggest they use Difference Engine instead of the caption glasses which have proved to be extremely unreliable and the caption boxes which are often positioned in such a way that it is difficult to follow the play. We very much hope that this will be rolled out in other theatres and would like to congratulate Talking Birds on an excellent initiative”
[audience feedback email]
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