Case study · Madrid

The school where the theatre is also heard from the door.

Madrid's Royal Higher School of Dramatic Art — the Community of Madrid's higher-education centre on Avenida de Nazaret — embeds NaviLens codes at its main entrance, on the doors of its stage halls and across the «Somos ASEPAU 2025 · Accessibility in the performing arts» exhibition.

Av. Nazaret 2

Madrid · Retiro district · Niño Jesús

Higher-education centre

Community of Madrid · Department of Education

Lorca · Valle-Inclán halls

Stage spaces open to the public

ES · EN · 42+

Multilingual voice in the language of the phone

The client

RESAD
Community of Madrid · Department of Education

The Royal Higher School of Dramatic Art is the Community of Madrid's higher-education centre for Dramatic Art. It teaches the higher studies in Acting, Stage Direction & Dramaturgy and Set Design, and regularly opens its García Lorca and Valle-Inclán halls to the public with productions, readings and final-year projects.

The building, of exposed brick and large glazed panels, stands on Avenida de Nazaret 2 (Retiro · Niño Jesús). The school has long applied accessibility features to its productions — adapted subtitling, stage walk-throughs, easy-read programmes — and now adds a voice-orientation layer for the physical spaces and its internal communication.

On top of the usual signage, NaviLens lets any visitor — students, faculty, audience — hear aloud, in the language of their phone, where they are, which hall they are facing or what each panel of an exhibition is about, without having to lean into the sign.

§ The challenge

Making accessibility something to teach and use.

01
A school that is also a public theatre
RESAD is not just a classroom: it programmes open performances in the García Lorca and Valle-Inclán halls and welcomes first-time spectators. For a person with visual impairment, identifying the correct entrance between the glass cube, the brick façade and the side accesses was the first challenge of the visit.
02
Finding the right hall and door
Once inside, the lobby branches into corridors leading to the different halls and classrooms. Reaching «Sala Valle-Inclán · Door 2» autonomously — and not behind a companion — required an audio information layer over the physical signs.
03
Talking about stage accessibility with the students
RESAD trains the future directors, playwrights and performers. The «Somos ASEPAU 2025 · Accessibility in the performing arts» exhibition, installed in its corridors, needed its panels — dense in text and image — to be listenable without straining the eyes on the poster.

Inside RESAD: a double wooden door with two metal porthole windows leading into the Valle-Inclán hall; on the light marble wall, to the left of the door, a NaviLens code framed in white; next to it, the sign «Sala Valle-Inclán · Door 2» with a red curtain pictogram, and to the right a fire extinguisher

§ The solution

Codes on the door, on the sign and on the panel.

RESAD installs NaviLens codes in three distinct layers. Building access: a framed diamond on the glass cube of the main lobby, identifiable from the street. Stage halls: next to the Sala Valle-Inclán and Sala García Lorca signs, announcing the hall's name, the door number and the day's performance. Internal communication: on every panel of the «Somos ASEPAU 2025 · Accessibility in the performing arts» exhibition.

The visitor opens NaviLens or NaviLens GO and, with a sweep of the phone from several metres away and without aiming, hears aloud — in the language of their phone — which building they are entering, which hall they are facing or the full content of the sign.

It's the same idea the school applies on stage — adapted subtitling, stage walk-throughs, easy-read programmes — transferred to architecture: no visitor now has to ask someone else for help to find their hall.

§ RESAD inside

From the glass cube to the tactile table.

Outside view of RESAD from the street: large red-brick façade with a sloping roof and a glazed cube with a black metal structure; in the centre of the glass front, a NaviLens code framed in white above the open door where a uniformed security guard waits; in the foreground, granite steps and a metal railing

Panel from the «Somos ASEPAU 2025 · Accessibility in the performing arts» exhibition hung on a wall at RESAD: red header with the slogan, photographs of the «pidAA» project from the University of Valladolid, poster of the production «Fundido a negro» by Bambalinas Teatro programmed for 27 March 2025, and text blocks on inclusive theatre

Corridor at RESAD with the «Somos ASEPAU 2025» exhibition spread across several A2 panels on the wall: at the far left, the panel about the National Grand Theatre of Lima and Vi-SOR; next, panels from Accedan on accessibility experiences in the performing arts, another on accessible storytelling and the one on inclusive theatre at the UVa; on one of the panels, a framed NaviLens code stuck directly to the wall

Tactile table from the «Somos ASEPAU 2025» exhibition at RESAD: on a black tablecloth, several articulated wooden figures stage a small choir and a theatre scene with miniature wings; in the foreground, a white card with the pictogram of a touching hand and the text «Tactile table»; in the background, the exhibition panels and the NaviLens code on the wall

The codes are placed at visitor height, next to the physical sign they label, so the phone sweep detects them without having to aim at an exact point.

§ Why it matters

A public school that practises what it teaches.

Coherence

RESAD already programmes performances with adapted subtitling and stage walk-throughs for audiences with visual impairment. NaviLens carries that same logic into the architecture: the building behaves like the productions it hosts.

Pedagogy

The future directors, playwrights and performers trained at RESAD cross paths every day with NaviLens codes and the ASEPAU exhibition. Stage accessibility is learnt in the corridor, not only in class.

Audience

Spectators with visual impairment can come on their own to a premiere: they find the entrance from the street, identify the right hall and follow the programme panels without asking for help at the box office.

§ And your centre?