An evening of theater or visiting a concert seems obvious. But what if you are deaf or hard of hearing? Then it feels like you are being kept outside the experience. You might still feel music, but the lyrics and stories are often lost. Yet last week this was different in the Nieuwe Kolk (DNK) in Assen. For the first time there was a theater show fully accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, thanks to the deployment of two signs and two writing interpreters.
The 15-year-old Niels van Aalten is hard of hearing and was present at the theater show of fast. Normally he can feel the music, through the thump of the drums and the vibrations of the bass, but the lyrics do not always come in.
Niels was in a special place, almost in front and in front of him a tablet was on a tripod. “It was really great,” he says enthusiastically. “Everything that said or sang fast was typed live. If I didn’t hear something right, I could just read along. This was really a solution, that’s how every concert should be!”
Niels has already been to large concerts, such as Coldplay and The Streamers, where interpreters were also present. But he also knows how rare that is still. “I am lucky that I had a tablet here. There are often only a few places available for the hearing impaired and deaf come.
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