Movies are always associated with the visual aspects and beautiful scenic cinematography, but how might a blind or visually impaired person enjoy the pictures?
“Watching” movies with audio
A fisheye lens is in the centre and the woman is playing the piano with her hands and feet together, like a child. The female voice in the headphones says, filling the gaps between dialogues. Black headphones are connected to a palm-sized black device with buttons on the side to adjust the volume. It may be a rare experience to sink into the soft and comfortable seat of a cinema while someone is describing the images on the silver screen in a whisper. However, for over 2 million people living with sight loss in the UK, audio description (AD) is now the essential way for them to enjoy films. Research from the University of York shows that 87% of visually impaired people access audiovisual entertainment including films and television on a regular basis.
Labelled as audio described on some websites, films with the service allow blind or partially sighted groups to hear features such as action, expression or environment as the story flows. These audio supports could be found in cinemas, streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney, and many new films released on DVD and Blu-ray.
“I absolutely love doing it”
Trish Hodson, freelance script writer for audio description
“I’ve always loved cinema, film and TV.” says Trish Hodson, who is now in her fourth year as a scriptwriter for audio description on a freelance basis, “I’ve also always been passionate about access. And increasingly more and more to do with access for blind and partially blind people. To be able to combine all of that into this one kind of job feels brilliant.”
Currently working on a six-part documentary series for Disney Plus, her clients include Netflix, Amazon, HBO and so on, predominantly from America but also European series dubbed into English.
Before entering the industry of audio description, Trish has a long history working in the accessibility field. She used to be the access manager in a commercial theatre in Bristol for 24 years, overseeing all sorts of improvements to accessibility until 2017 when her department was made redundant.
Trish decided that she would stay in accessibility and put all the information and great insights she gathered within the experiences into a training program providing everyday access solutions to venues such as theatre or restaurants.
“It’s quite hard work as an individual to try.” she summarises that experience, “I kind of work well for it, but not enough in order to sustain me in terms of wage.”
The program didn’t function as well as Trish expected, but she didn’t stop there. In 2020, she got a chance to finish an audio describer course for live theatre with Vocaleyes, a UK-based charity aiming at increasing the opportunities for visually impaired people to enjoy art and heritage. The course turned out to be “all fantastic”, even though she doubted whether she could do it at the beginning.
The joy of mastering a new skill didn’t last long. Trish and her fellows soon found that there was no more live theatre for them to do as the Covid hit the world. “We all sort of opted into screen and learned how to do writing for that.” That was the key plot when films and televisions became her main focus.
As any other craftsman, Trish has her own routine to set up a work after receiving the task from a manager. She normally starts with watching the film before doing anything else, and makes sure she’ve got everything she needs for background with online research. The first viewing allows her to pick up on key information and the pace of the film. She notes down the crucial plot points and gaps between dialogues to do the first draft.
At the end of the first go comes the quality control. Trish has a long checklist printed out, the list extends when she learns anything new to notice during the practising. There are some simple requirements to tick the boxes, such as spelling, company logo, credit, and also challenging questions like “how do I describe this properly”.
Describing the images is not as easy as it may sound like. A film sequence of a scene might be two minutes long on screen, but it could take Trish one or two hours to complete the script for that particular part “because it’s complicated in some way”.
Balancing the storytelling and the details could be a tricky one, especially for those rich in visuals. Trish loves the amazing colours and frames presented in documentaries. However, as a professional audio describer, everything she writes has to serve the story. “You’ve only got time to say someone’s pointing a gun at someone, and you’ve ditched the beautiful sunset” she explains. At the same time, there is a rule to not be interpretive. “Don’t tell people everything.” Trish says. It is still important to leave it open for the audience to form their own opinions.
Reading the script out aloud is another useful piece of advice as Trish says the sentences sound completely different when she says it versus how it reads skim across the line. She gets to know where the words are a bit clunky and replaces them with better expressions.
Styles of scripts vary from films to films. She once encountered a 40 minute piece with only four gaps within it. For a talkative one like this, Trish finds it hard to give more details. While she also has experiences working on some slow pieces with very few conversations. In that case, she will use sound effects to punctuate the blank in order to avoid boredom of the same voice speaking all the time.
Diversity is another important element in her view. As a gay woman, there was no representation for gay particularly women when she was growing up. Now this is her chance to make the contribution, she always tries to present the visual representation for blind or partially blind people in audio description.
“So that person might think ‘God. That’s me on screen’ because that was so important to me as I grew up just to see anything that looked like me or lived a lifestyle like mine.” Trish says.
“People really care about audio description”
Idunne Sofie Riise, cofounder of Zille Media
Idunne and her company launched their new audio description tool in 2024 to help with task management in audio description production. The platform that her company provides will make the process easier for scriptwriters, voice artists and also managers to cooperate and communicate with automatic file sharing and AI assistance.
The tool could analyse the content and suggest time spent for different tasks. After the scriptwriters put the text in the system, voice artists could just come and hit the record button. The whole film could be edited as you go and saves a lot of time compared to the previous way that a sound engineer is needed to put all the files together into a timeline, according to Idunne.
“What we are always trying to do is to create a space where it is really easy to focus on the quality and the creativity rather than kind of niggling about with the technology,” she says.
During their development, Idunne got opportunities to work with many professionals in the field. What surprises her is their enthusiasm.
She says. “They could do so much more and they are really passionate about what they do. They really care about it.”
In terms of AI’s impact on actual content creation, Idunne says it would probably be present in almost every part of the audio description production process, however, not taking over. “Certainly not anytime soon.” she explains, “And I don’t really see it ever.
“There are so many things that are believed truly uniquely human and whilst AI can be a great tool. It does change things but I don’t think that it will replace things.” she says in a firm voice, “It will open up doors to exciting new ways of working and new possibilities.”
“Raise awareness for all people is probably the biggest thing that cinemas can do about it.”
Isobel Harrop, cinema programme assistant
Even though charities and organisations are promoting audio descriptions to make more visually impaired people enjoy the films. The service is still underutilised in cinemas, with about once a month in Showroom, an independent cinema in Sheffield. Staff from the box office recalls that she has only encountered two or three blind people using the devices since she worked there two years ago.
Isobel Harrop, the programme assistant in the Showroom, thinks audio description may be misunderstood. She used to work in front of the house and says some people resist going to the audio-described films because they don’t want to listen to them.
“It’s very personal,” she explained, the service would not disrupt anyone else even sitting next to the user. “I guess people think of cinema as so visual and how could someone watch the film without it, but that’s the amazing thing about the audio.”
Compared to subtitles, another accessibility action with much more fame, audio description is less mentioned in daily life. Isobel agrees that one of the key things in cinemas for all is more publicising of accessible options including AD, relaxed screenings, and dementia-options.
Read More: Lack of BSL in cinema compared to ASL
