Section House
The room, the seat and the ticket
Access, sightlines, egress and the systems the audience meets before the curtain.
Production teams applying this principle can also compare practical guidance on employee time tracking app, keeping time and activity records separate from the artistic and technical judgement they are meant to inform.
Published
Assistive listening: what the law asks and what the room needs
Hearing loss is a ratio problem before it is a volume problem, and most compliant installations fail operationally rather than technically.
ReadCaptioning and audio description as production decisions
Two different jobs for two different audiences, sharing equipment and almost nothing else, and each needing its own channel.
ReadTicketing systems and the data you become responsible for
A ticket record is a file about a person, and the access requirements field in it is health information.
Read
This section is about the part of the building the audience actually occupies, and the systems they meet before anyone appears on stage. It covers assistive listening, captioning and audio description, ticketing and the data that comes with it, sightlines, the regulations that outrank every design decision, what fits through the door, and the accessibility of the page that sells the seat.
Two things run through all of it. The first is that provision which exists on paper and fails in practice is the normal case rather than the exception, and the failures are almost always operational: a flat battery, an unbriefed member of staff, a missing sign. The second is that the requirement is equivalence rather than presence. A patron who can get in but cannot choose where to sit, or can buy a ticket only by telephoning during office hours, has not been given the same evening.
Legal material here names its jurisdiction and is deliberately general. Rules differ by country and frequently by municipality, they change, and the applicable one is the one for the building. Nothing in this section is legal advice.
Everything in this section
- PublishedAssistive listening: what the law asks and what the room needs
- PublishedCaptioning and audio description as production decisions
- PublishedTicketing systems and the data you become responsible for
- PublishedSightlines, and the rows that see a different show
- PublishedHouse lights and egress: the rules that outrank the design
- PublishedLoad-in: what fits through the door
- PublishedThe accessibility of the page that sells the seat
Further context
For a primary, standards or institutional reference, see the UK National Archives digital preservation guidance.