DEAF and blind people across Scotland are being urged to petition cinemas for better facilities after the film theatres failed to get connected.

No cinemas have yet taken Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council up on lat year's promise to invest £100,000 for audio-description and captioning equipment in cinemas.

Captioning machines add subtitles of a film's dialogue for deaf people to read while audio-description files give a running commentary on what is happening on screen to help the blind.

However, although most modern films are released with subtitling and audio-description files - not a single Scottish cinema has claimed the grants.

Film theatres were invited to apply for the £5000 grants, making sure deaf and blind customers could enjoy films in the same way as hearing and sighted people.

The RNIB and RNID are now encouraging anyone who would benefit from the specialist equipment to appeal to their local cinema to apply before the March 2 closing date.