The Vital Role of Audio Description in Enhancing Visual Media for the Blind (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Just watch a movie and close your eyes, and you can't follow most movies with just listening. Be like, who's that? What's going on? Police lights flash on the front of the Byers house as Officer Callaghan stands outside with Joyce and Jonathan.

Speaker 2: Audio description is a description of the action that's going on in between the dialogue.

Speaker 1: Inside the dark house, Hopper walks down the hallway with a flashlight.

Speaker 3: For blind people, having that audio description, it becomes their eyes.

Speaker 4: I definitely say, Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things and Game of Thrones have been my audio description highlights.

Speaker 1: Eleven closes her eyes. Elsewhere in the lab, the man from the photo sits at a table with a piece of paper.

Speaker 5: I can't see anything at all. So actually, I've never had audio description on life, as it were. So having it on TV is a great start.

Speaker 3: I use it for watching TV programmes, for films, films at home, films in the cinema. Theatre and cinema are my favourites.

Speaker 2: I use audio description when I go to football matches.

Speaker 4: A lot of those little subtleties in the way a person looks or something they do with their hands is actually a massive part of the story.

Speaker 1: Eleven steps out wearing the dress and wig. Lucas gives Dustin an impressed look as Mike gawks at her.

Speaker 5: If it's a gentle film, they'll have perhaps a gentler voice. And in the action films, they'll have a harder age description.

Speaker 1: It drags dried growth and a piece of shepherd's suit across the floor, leaving behind a trail of blood.

Speaker 4: All that tension, a lot of that is based in seeing what's happening and getting a sense of the atmosphere. And that's really brought to life as well by audio description. I don't watch anything without audio description.

Speaker 5: I'm an absolute addict of audio description. I OD on AD.

Speaker 2: For more information, call the RNIB helpline on 0303 123 9999 or visit audiodescription.org.uk. Hashtag AD support.