A local grant looks to help certain individuals have a more enjoyable experience at the movies.

Sierra Community Theatre in Jefferson received a Greene County Community Foundation grant of $4,125 to purchase hearing impaired headsets and closed caption readers. Manager Dustin Gustoff explains why he thought the movie theater needed to have the new equipment.

“Well we have a lot of patrons that have difficulty hearing, especially with the movies being so loud and that’s just kind of the way the studios make them. The headsets are a fantastic thing to help them be able to hear what’s actually being said. The closed captioning readers are helpful for people who have difficulty hearing, as well as for people whose native tongue isn’t English. It helps to read along with what’s being said.”

Gustoff describes how the hearing impaired headsets work.

“They have a knob on each side. One controls the hearing impaired, which it basically (operates as) it turns the volume of the ambient noises down and turns the vocals up. And then the other side is actually an audio description so it basically describes what’s going on in the scene.”

He adds that they are having a free showing of the Murder on the Orient Express tomorrow at 2pm, with a demonstration of the equipment prior to the showing. There is no additional charge to use the equipment.