Into Film hold free subtitled screenings schools across at UK cinemas.

In March 2022 film education charity Into Film partnered with UK cinemas to hold 99 free school screenings. For the first time, exhibitors were asked to screen every film with Hard of Hearing subtitles. Driven by the principle of increasing universal accessibility, the events were not advertised to schools as ‘special screenings’ for a specific audience but all attendees were made aware of the subtitles to help raise awareness amongst non-d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing students about access requirements.

In addition to this, over a third of the screenings were autism friendly, and cinemas welcomed just under 7,000 attendees.

The pilot activity was very well received by teachers, with 98% agreeing that it’s important to raise awareness around different audience requirements and 71% that watching a film with subtitles can contribute to increased literacy.

'I am a strong advocate for watching everything with subtitles from an early age to increase word and letter recognition and literacy skills.' - teacher

'Many of my students prefer to view films with subtitles, so this was a very good idea!' - teacher

‘One teacher specifically reached out to make sure this was an option as one of their students required the subtitles. They were grateful as it was inclusive to her entire group.’ - exhibitor

There was also plenty of positive feedback about subtitles from teachers who brought a high percentage of pupils who had English as a second language

One of the main challenges was lack of available content on DCP with in-built closed caption subtitles which is something we know our distribution colleagues are working hard on to address.