Hearing Loss at the Edinburgh Fringe
- Published
- in Hearables
Ten years ago, there was virtually no mention of hearing loss at the Edinburgh Fringe, and very little to help anyone who had hearing loss. The Traverse, the main professional theatre that participates in the Fringe rather than the International Festival, had a hearing loop, but that was more or less it. Signing was limited and I don’t recall many shows exploring the effects of hearing loss or deafness until “Louder is not always Clearer” arrived on the Summerhall stage in 2019.
A lot has changed. After the interruption of Covid, the Edinburgh Deaf Festival https://www.creativescotland.com/news-stories/latest-news/archive/2026/07/fifth-edinburgh-deaf-festival—bigger-brighter-bolder-than-ever came into existence. Celebrating deaf culture, language and heritage, it runs as an integral part of the Fringe. This was its fifth year, where it had grown to 80 events. Equally importantly, a recognition of hearing loss has become more obvious in the mainstream. In the first week of the Fringe, Dundee Rep’s excellent show “The Singer” won a well-deserved Fringe First Award. It was an object lesson in how to put BSL, captioning and deaf experience together on stage for every audience member. It was a brilliant example of how to do it properly and tell an important story in a way that everyone could appreciate.
Having attended the Fringe for around 40 years, Fringe audiences seem to be ageing, which makes support for hearing loss more important. I’m not sure whether there are any official figures on the audience demographic, but in many shows we attended, it felt that we were amongst the youngest audience members. A number of comedians made references to taking their audience with them, with their material reflecting the challenges of retirement, not least having to care for parents who are in their nineties. Mark Thomas illustrated the issue well when one of his hearing aids slipped out of an overly sweaty ear in the rather warm, subterranean Stand Comedy Club. I noticed an increasing number of performers wearing hearing aids, as well as many in the audience. Which is good, but highlights a problem for venues.
According to the RNID https://rnid.org.uk/what-we-do/data-and-evidence/deafness-and-hearing-loss-prevalence/, around 2.4 million people in the UK have a level of hearing loss that means they would struggle to hear most conversational speech. 900,000 of those are classified as severely or profoundly deaf. That latter category needs help in hearing what’s on stage, but the wider 2.4 million would benefit as well. BSL is great for the 85,000 who use it as their main means of communication, but theatres need to look at ways of providing hearing assistance for everyone.
Captioning is an obvious option, but most of what we saw was difficult to read, so audiences following the captions missed much of what was happening on stage. I had hoped to find a few venues which might be trying out Auracast – the new Bluetooth technology which works with both hearing aids and recent earbuds. I had high hopes for the Traverse, as they had put out a press release in June about their new Auracast system, alongside details of some of the Fringe shows (https://aurahear.com/2026/06/were-excited-auracast-comes-to-edinburghs-traverse-theatre/. Sadly, on the five occasion we saw plays there, I found no sign of any Auracast transmission. There was no signage suggesting it was working (nor was there any for their telecoil system) and none of the front of house staff knew anything about it. I understand the excitement of getting press releases out, but for accessibility issues, they do need to reflect reality, and the theatre staff need to be trained to support anyone requiring help.
The Traverse also exhibited some unwelcome aspects of sound design, which didn’t enhance hearing for anyone. In their headline show “After Party” the actors were miked, which led to some very strange effects. At one point two characters were talking together at the front left of stage. One voice came from a speaker close to them; the other from a speaker at the top right of stage, inserting a good 10 metre separation into what should have been an intimate conversation. There were equally bizarre effects throughout “Badgers” in the smaller Traverse 2 studio space, where the sound source jumped back and forth between the actress and speakers. I got the feeling that directors and sound designers are being blinded by technology and not listening to what the audience is hearing. Sound should enhance a performance, not degrade it. That was definitely not the case with some of the Traverse shows.
A few venues also suffered from over-enthusiastic (or just incompetent) sound technicians who ramped up the volume of pre-show music to a level that made conversation impossible. One show at the Gilded Balloon forced us to get out earplugs while waiting for the show to start. Given that the perceived wisdom at the Fringe is that ticket sales depend on word of mouth recommendations, preventing conversation with people you’re sitting next to seems particularly self-destructive to the show’s revenue, as well as the audience’s hearing. I know that the Fringe is a major technical challenge with sound engineers trying to run far too many shows. That has always been a problem, but a growing number seem to have little idea of what they’re doing.
In terms of hearing accessibility, I’d hoped for a bit more this year, especially given the Traverse’s press release about Auracast. On the plus side, the content of what was on stage raised the profile of hearing, and “The Singer” was a superb demonstration of how to do it properly. I’m hoping that next year, with more understanding of Auracast and support for it in more hearing aids and earbuds, the experience will be far more solid.