Access Virginia: We Make Entertainment Come Alive
Lois Boyle did not plan to work with persons with disabilities on a longterm basis. She had limited experience working with the hearing impaired and the equipment involved in the process.
Fate intervened, knocking on her door while she worked as a court reporter. Fate continued to knock for several years, pushing her to learn more about the communities of disabled persons until she founded and presided over Access Virginia in 2014, first as the President and then as the Executive Director.
The first subtle rapping of opportunity appeared in 2010 through the needs of Angela, a music major who loved the arts and theater but had suffered hearing loss at the age of 30, and Pat, who had attended shows with captions in Norfolk but didn’t understand why she couldn’t find services in Newport News. Lois and a few other court reporters offered their services when Angela asked for help for weekly church services, but realized it would be expensive.
Lois and Angela continued to communicate via email, eventually arriving at a plan to have Lois commute to Angela’s church on the first Sunday of the month. Understanding that long intervals without the connection with her church family could lead to a bout of depression for Angela, Lois made the three hour-and-a-half commute between Newport News, Virginia and Lois’s home of Hampton Roads, Virginia one Sunday a month for two years.
“I just want to see a show,” Angela told Lois.
“If you really want to see a show, go to the theater and ask them for captions,” Lois said. “Then I will learn to do the captions.”
Lois has learned to allow her potential clients to present their case to the venue from which they need services. The person living with a disability has the clearest understanding of what they need and why it is important to them.
With this in mind, Lois set up a meeting with the venue and Angela presented her case. Things progressed relatively smoothly from there. Angela requested and received permission for captions. Lois learned the technique by practicing on the equipment at The Kennedy Center. Finally, with Angela’s husband tagging along for his first experience at a live theater performance, they headed to the theater with a desktop, a laptop and a stenograph machine.
The show on that magical night was The Lion King.
“I just feel like a little girl again,” Angela said after the show.
This may have been the epiphanic moment for Lois; the awareness of what it actually means to live without one of the senses so many of us take for granted. The opportunity to work with other forms of disability appeared when someone at a meeting of the Norfolk Mayor’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities asked Lois a question.
“What about us?”
Frances, a board member who is blind, had a good reason to ask “What about us?” While a person who is blind can attend a theater show and hear most of the dialogue, he or she misses visual cues such as who is speaking to whom and what the performers are wearing.
“They have to go through more processes to see a show than we do,” Lois said.
Frances was not the only person in the room concerned that the program needed more inclusiveness: President of the Board, Jackie, had lost her sight due to complications of a spider bite. Lois performed a little research and discovered audio description, a narration of the visuals for persons with vision loss. She called an organization that provides the service in North Carolina, roughly three hours from Hampton Roads, and was given the opportunity to shadow one of their audio describers.
Through shadowing, she learned that the transmitter and receiver setup is similar to a set of walkie talkies. She also discovered how to offer descriptions of the settings, costumes, persons on stage, and the actions of those people. These descriptions generally begin prior to the curtain rising and continue throughout the play as small asides between scenes and during pauses in action. Preshow narration includes a synopsis of the show, descriptions of the costumes, who the main characters are, and any props. Costumes and props are especially important for period pieces. Another key narration point involves pre-narration, or giving the setup when audio cues are vital to the next bit of action. For example, a gunshot or a doorbell is audible, but without the visual signals to supplement that sound, it has no meaning.
Lois knew she could provide the services, but she needed equipment. Prior to 2012, a grant paid the expenses for an organization from New York to provide open captioning. When the grant ended, so did the open captioning. Lois took over in 2012, obtaining a contract to buy her own equipment and cover expenses. She formed Access Virginia in 2014, serving first as President and Executive Director, in which capacity she continued to serve through a pandemic and stressed economy in 2020.
As of 2020 one organization in Hampton Roads covered two theaters in Norfolk and two in Newport News, with hopes to add Virginia Beach to the list. Theaters with which Access Virginia has worked or consulted include Chrysler Hall, a host venue for touring shows in Norfolk, VA; Wells Theater, a performing arts theater in Norfolk, VA; and Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News, VA.
The cost of audio description is lower than for open captioning, although the theater is charged a fee that is often subsidized through a grant. As of 2015, Access Virginia provided both audio description and open captioning.
Access Virginia has received funding from many different organizations. Bennett’s Creek Sertoma Club provided funds to purchase the VCI 7160C (an LED board). Funds for audio description equipment came from Virginia Beach Town Center Blind Lions Club. Other funding sources include the National Federation of the Blind and the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), Virginia Beach Chapter.
The Virginia Beach Hearing Loss Association has many stories of persons living with, but not confined by, their hearing loss. Lois approached them with the idea of writing a play to bring a few of those stories to public attention and increase awareness. The resulting work, ‘Between Sound and Silence,’ offered more opportunities for persons with hearing loss as well as providing a new insight into the many facets of a sense-impaired life.
While the Americans With Disabilities Act requires reasonable accommodation to be made for those living with disabilities, a gap exists. Deaf persons generally depend on American Sign Language (ASL) or captioning to communicate, yet 70% of the hearing disabled community don’t know ASL. Having an interpreter using ASL at a theater or show is not always sufficient to bridge the gap. Audio Description and open captioning provide a bridge to access the theater, but it does not come without an occasional obstacle.
One such obstacle presents itself when a non-disabled theater patron feels that the captioning services interfere with his or her own experience as an audience member. During one event, a patron voiced her discomfort at the open captioning service and another patron offered to switch seats, allowing a clear view of the stage for the dissatisfied woman. Although Lois was only providing services for one show at that theater, the interaction stuck in her mind.
“These services are not as prevalent as they should be. But as our population ages and people through natural age progression lose hearing and sight, the need for accommodations will increase. Our valiant men and women serving in the military also experience a high percentage of service-related injuries resulting in hearing and vision loss. Public venues and facilities are becoming more informed about this segment of population that patronize their businesses and the need to offer effective accommodations and the need to be more inclusive. Access Virginia is established to create that accessibility for the patron and assist businesses with being ADA compliant. Access Virginia understands the importance of the services we provide. We turn silence into sound and darkness into light, exclusion into inclusion. We make entertainment come alive!”
. . . Lois Boyle, October 2020
