Closed captioning for the deaf and hearing impaired is an accepted part of small screen culture, featured on approximately sixty percent of mainstream DVDs and available every evening on TV. Visual impaired audiences are not so fortunate, despite a process called audio description (available on Thank God You’re Here Season Two) that enables blind people to ‘watch’ DVDs.

By Luke Buckmaster

In August the federal government distributed its Raising Children DVD, a project intended to assist Australians in the early years of parenting. While many new parents may have benefited from the incentive, those with sensory impairments discovered they’d been left in the dark. Released without functions to assist hearing or vision impaired audiences, a better title for the DVD may have been Raising Children For Those Who Can See and Hear.

“I am disappointed,” said Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes.

“Parents who are deaf or have hearing impairments and parents who are blind and have low vision are unable to obtain the information. As a parent who is blind, I’m sure I would have found the DVD of assistance if the information on it was accessible to me.”

Some may consider it odd for a blind person to complain about being unable to access a DVD. There is, however, a seldom-used process called ‘audio description’ which makes “watching” a DVD possible for those without sight.

Closed captioning for the deaf and hearing impaired is available every evening on Australian TV and featured on a large portion (about 60%) of mainstream DVD releases. Audio description, on the other hand, is available on only 2% of DVDs despite a significant chunk of the population (about 300,000 Australians) who could benefit from its inclusion.

Next time the federal government releases a DVD they would be well advised to follow the example set by the distributors of Thank God You’re Here Season Two (now available to buy and rent). Featuring closed captions and audio description, it is the first ever audio-described DVD of an Australian television series. The show’s second season averaged an audience of 1.7 million, and now for the first time blind and vision impaired viewers can hear what all the fuss is about. Media Access Australia - an organisation dedicated to supporting technological solutions to media access issues - say although audio description is primarily for the vision impaired and the blind, it can also be “largely beneficial to those without vision impairment while they are otherwise out of the room or preoccupied.”

The audio description track is an ongoing commentary that guides the listener by providing a series of concise observations on body language, decor, costumes and other significant visual elements. In one skit in TGYH Cal Wilson walks onto a set and discovers she is Vicky, the co-host of a Temptation style game show.

“Vicky strikes a comic crouching pose and freezes,” explains a crisp male voice on the sound track. “She gestures expansively over a panel of fake celebrity photographs. She strikes a series of poses…”

In another Tony Martin appears looking young and funky, with the audio description track assessing every article of his clothing: “Tony emerges wearing youthful, hip street wear, low-slung jeans, a hoodie, a beanie, and a striking scarf. Sunglasses rest on his head…”

Audio description attempts to leave little to the imagination. A carefully selected series of words can evoke lucid mental images, and this is the closest many people get to experiencing what the rest of us take for granted. Although it is extremely unlikely that audio description will ever take off in the cinema (for one thing, the demographic of those who would benefit is comparatively very small) it’s certainly possible for it to become a much greater accessibility tool on DVDs in Australia. The U.K. and the U.S. have a considerably higher percentage of captioned and audio described DVDs, and there is no reason why Australia can’t jump on the bandwagon.

Roadshow Entertainment, which claim to be “the leader in access initiatives,” recently released five new audio described DVDs: The Illusionist, Arthur and the Invisibles, Hannibal Rising, TMNT and Thank God You’re Here.

By Luke Buckmaster