Subtitles Right in Front of Your Eyes

In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Audinate, developer of Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced a collaboration with the Netherlands’ Het Nationale Theater and XRAI to implement AI-enabled smart glasses with real-time subtitles for theatre-goers. GAAD promotes digital access and inclusion for more than one billion people with disabilities or impairments.

Starting this fall, attendees at select performances by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague and on tour, including those who speak little or no Dutch or have hearing loss, can wear smart glasses for free that display subtitles in different colours to indicate which actor is speaking. Affectionately dubbed “LiveText,” the official launch is scheduled to take place at the end of June during the Holland Festival, the largest international performing arts festival in the Netherlands.

While subtitling is not new to theater performances, previous implementations were labour-intensive, involving back-of-house staff manually advancing through pre-translated scripts. This new implementation, created from an idea and concept of Het Nationale Theater and using the Dante solution, is unique because the subtitles are based on the actors’ voices, not on a preloaded script. The audio from each actor is transmitted via Dante to an Avid VENUE | S6L audio desk and then sent to XRAI’s AI-enabled software, XRAI Stream. The software converts speech to text in real-time, translates it if necessary, and transmits high-quality subtitles to the XREAL Air 2 Pro AR glasses in the theatre auditorium. Dante’s ultra-low latency and reliable multi-channel audio timing are a linchpin to the solution’s robustness. Having the subtitles appear almost simultaneously — correctly labelled with the character speaking — is critical for the audience’s understanding and enjoyment of the performance.

With LiveText’s breakthrough innovation, powered by XRAI, 223 languages are accessible for users to choose from, including those with double-byte glyphs and those that read from right to left. Now, non-Dutch speakers and many individuals with hearing loss can enjoy theatre performances in their preferred language. The translation glasses can also benefit international conference attendees and other live events.

“We’re always excited to see Dante being used in innovative ways, especially when it involves enriching or expanding people’s experiences,” said Joshua Rush, Chief Marketing Officer at Audinate. “We’re thrilled to be part of such a ground-breaking undertaking.”

“We’re proud to be the first in the world to offer this innovative service for non-Dutch speakers and the deaf and hard of hearing,” said Cees Debets, Director of Het Nationale Theater. “This marks a major step in making theatre accessible to all. We’re working hard to share this innovation with other theatres and producers so that more people in the Netherlands and around the world can enjoy theatre without barriers or limitations.”