As part of Captioning Awareness Week, Melanie Sharpe campaigned to raise awareness of access to the arts for deaf, defeaned and hard of hearing audiences.
Incredibly, it took a pandemic to make the arts more accessible. Last year, theatres started releasing performances online, with subtitles, for the first time. More and more online discussions were being made accessible through live subtitles – from small museum talks, to large conferences.
This was the first time deaf audiences had such a huge range of culture to choose from. In July 2020, deaf theatre lover Michelle, wrote: “My armchair has become my new theatre seat. I can honestly say that I have accessed more performances in these last few months than I have in a lifetime.”