Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2013 April 3 - 9 [WELFARE]

Non-profit group to work to enable the disabled to enjoy theater art

Hearing-impaired people have founded an organization in Tokyo to increase opportunities for the disabled to enjoy theater performances.

Hirokawa Asako, representing the Theater Accessibility Network (TA-net), stated at its inauguration meeting on March 31, “Our slogan is ‘Let us enjoy theater art together.’” She explained that the aim of the non-profit organization is to create connections among theater venues and companies, disabled people, and support programs for them to watch theater performances, such as sign language interpretation.

Hirokawa, who is also an actress of the Japanese Theatre of the Deaf, said that among 60 theater performances she watched while studying in the U.K., 39 came with support programs available for people with disabilities, such as sign language interpretation and subtitles.

In the U.K., citizens can easily obtain information, through e-mail or free papers published by theaters, regarding what kind of support programs, whether audio guides, subtitles, or sign language, are available for visually- or hearing-impaired people to enjoy attending plays.

The U.K. in 1995 established the Disability Discrimination Act to comprehensively ban discrimination against disabled persons in employment, education, and other fields. Following this move, the country enacted another law in 2010 to prohibit discrimination based on age, disabilities, gender or religious beliefs.

Osugi Yutaka, associate professor at Tsukuba University of Technology who is hearing impaird, stressed at the meeting the need for Japan to enact a law to ban discrimination against disabled people. “We must create a society where it is standard practice for theaters to provide support for disabled people,” he added.

Some theaters in Japan have started to lend scripts and portable caption devices to hearing-impaired persons as well as provide theater tours for visually-challenged people.

Hirokawa explained that the organization is at present assisting the hearing-impaired in various ways and eventually will expand its services in order to give support to people with all types of disabilities in the future.