The target group is people with hearing disabilities or those in need of foreign-language support. The system can send text to a range of presentation media, including smartphones, monitors, LED displays and on-stage projection units. It is possible to use several media simultaneously and to personalise the choice of language.

On smartphones, content is delivered via the app Thea, downloaded to the user's smartphone. The app is available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Starting the app brings up a menu to select the language. It is possible to have as many languages as needed for a given production. Users with hearing disabilities are aided by different colours of text for different characters in the play.

LED displays often require a vendor-specific interface. We currently offer interfaces for some IP-based LED displays. For HDMI- and DVI-based devices such as monitors and projectors, we offer a small Linux-based adapter. This makes it possible to connect as many devices as needed, each with its own language if required.

Different character sets can be used depending on the capability of smartphones and displays. So far our app has been used for Latin, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Sami and Japanese.

When preparing the text, we use standard screen and television subtitling software. In this process we use the script and a video of the performance. The output consists of editable files in a standard captioning format. Minor changes can be made directly in the system.

It is possible to transmit pre-recorded audio description synchronised with the captioning, without the need for an extra person. The pre-recorded audio description is divided into a number of short segments. Each segment is set to play either at the same time as a specific line or a few seconds later. Users receive the audio directly on their smartphone, using the same app as for captioning.

It will complement the display above the stage (controlled by Axity).

As with captioning, it is possible to have audio descriptions in more than one language.

Audio description for the screen works differently from the closed captioning solution. The app downloads a film package containing the audio description files and a compressed version of the film's soundtrack. The app listens to the audio from the screen and, using a technique called fingerprinting, works out — to within a second — how far into the film it is. It then uses this to play the audio file in sync with the film.

For people with dyslexia, who may struggle to read subtitles at the pace they're displayed, spoken subtitles can be used in the same way as audio description.

Dogood AB is the Nordic reseller of Moviereading, a system developed by Universal Multimedia Access. Moviereading is now used in Finland, Denmark and Norway.

We have long followed the development of Google Glass and other smart glasses — devices designed for augmented reality. We're interested in glasses that can display text on a virtual screen, which would be a better solution than smartphones for closed captioning. Together with a student project, we've developed an app for Android-based glasses from Epson. The drawback is that these glasses are still fairly expensive, but we hope to see more smart glasses vendors enter the market in the near future.

Since our system is built on standard hardware, we keep a close eye on the market and are always ready to adopt improved versions of existing smartphones, smart glasses or new devices.