Captioning Awareness Week 2025
Celebrate Captioning Awareness Week and our 25th anniversary year!
This November, we’re celebrating something special. For 25 years, Stagetext has been making theatre, talks, festivals, and live events accessible to deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences across the UK, through captions and subtitles.
We started with one theatre captioned show, The Duchess of Malfi, in the year 2000. Today, we caption and subtitle more than 1000 arts and culture events every year. That’s roughly 3 captioned or subtitled events happening somewhere in the UK every single day.
During Captioning Awareness Week (10-16 November), we’re shining a spotlight on all the incredible captioned and live subtitled events happening across the country, celebrating the venues making access a priority, and sharing stories from the people who can finally enjoy live performances without missing a single word.
Celebrate theatre captions and live subtitles in arts and culture
- Captioning Awareness Week celebrates text-based deaf access to arts and culture
- The week-long campaign raises awareness of theatre captioning and subtitling and challenges misconceptions around deaf access
- We share stories about the positive impact theatre captioning and live subtitling have had on deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people’s lives.
- During the week we work together with theatres, arts and heritage venues across the UK to promote accessible theatre shows, talks and tours.
- Through Captioning Awareness Week, we encourage arts, culture and heritage venues and organisations to support the 18 million deaf, deafened and hard of hearing adults in the UK and change lives.
25 Years of Stagetext
Celebrate our 25 year journey, have a look at the timeline of some key moments that shaped us along the way.
The story so far..
See a captioned show
Celebrate Captioning Awareness Week by attending one of the many captioned or live subtitled events during 10-16 November.
Captioned Events
Watch The Estate at home
Join us on the 12th of Nov for a special watch party! The Estate premieres on National Theatre at Home with subtitles as the default for the very first time.
How to get involved
Book your Deaf Awareness Training
Our team can help your venue understand deaf audiences and make simple changes that really matter to your deaf, deafened and hard of hearing visitors.
Deaf Awareness Training
Be the first to know about captioned events
Sign up for Stagetext’s newsletter to stay in the loop about upcoming captioned shows and live subtitled events.
Sign up
Captioning Skills with Digital Culture Network
More cultural organisations are recognising that captioning isn’t just a technical add-on, it’s becoming a core digital skill. Explore how you can develop your subtitling capabilities.
Explore
Become an Ambassador
Our ambassadors are volunteers who help support our work and are the voice of arts-loving caption and subtitle users across the UK. If that sounds like you, get in touch!
Get Involved
Accessibility Standards
Not sure where to start or brushing up on your accessibility standards? Have a look at our guidance to make sure that what you’re offering is the best quality for your audiences.
Useful Resources
Make a Donation
This year, we’re asking people to donate £25 to celebrate 25 years of deaf access to arts and culture. Or start a monthly gift from just £2.50. Every donation helps us continue our work, train more captioners, and support more venues.
Donate
Caption user
Wayne
Want to get involved? Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you!
Venues: We work with venues throughout the year, offering training sessions and free resources, including the Captioning Display Standards.
Captioned Events: See all the captioned events happening on our What’s On page.
