Our experience has shown that not everyone who uses the captions during a performance has declared that intention at the time of booking.
Some people repeat book for captioned performances but don’t identify themselves as deaf or make use of any available concessions.
Some people weren’t aware it was a captioned performance until the show started but found it very useful.
As part of the See a Voice project Kelly Kirkbride, Access Officer at the New Wolsey Theatre, agreed to lead a simple experiment to assess the number of people who found the captions useful at a range of performances. She arranged for each audience member at a captioned performance to be given a small, simple, laminated card which asked them to place the card in an usher’s bucket on their way out, after the performance, if they found the captions useful.
Over the course of 5 performances they discovered that, on average, 2.54% of the audience had declared, at the time of booking, their intention to use the captions but that 26.8% of the audience actually found the captions useful.
Why not try this experiment yourself over a number of captioned performances and see what results you get.