In October last year I wrote an article commending Emirates Airline for taking the needs of their visually impaired passengers into consideration by having a few movies with audio descriptors on their standard airline entertainment channel.
Here’s a great podcast from Twenty Thousand Hertz about audio descriptors and the impact they have on blind and visually impaired people who like tuning into movies and TV in a truly accessible way:
http://www.20k.org/episodes-1/2016/11/7/vcfshcmqgzdnc7ga8riqbztdzsl97v
An audio descriptor track is an additional audio channel that gives brief descriptions of the action taking place as it happens. You still hear the same sound track that everyone else does, but you are given extra snippets of necessary information so you can follow what’s happening on the screen without seeing it.
In my book, “A Different Way of Seeing”, I mention that I seldom watch action movies or thrillers because it’s hard to work out what’s going on. That’s no longer an obstacle with an audio descriptor.
Like so many other things that used to be challenges to those of us who are blind, making sense of movies has become so much easier through technology.
I found the podcast fascinating – why not give it a listen and find out more about this amazing technique!
Some people like Books over movies while others like movies over Books. I like audio described movies over movies. To me there are three categories, books, movies And Audio describe movies.
It’s nice to have options.
personally I prefer the flexibility of books. I seldom have the patience to sit through an entire movie – with audio descriptorsor not – I seem to always have other things I want to do. But I do like the fact that audio descriptors allow us to watch movies without missing what’s happening on screen