TV Shows Watched: like Water For Chocolate: S1E1 (MAX) with audio description, 911 Lone Star: S5E6 (Hulu) no audio description, Shrinking: S2E3 (Apple plus) with audio description, papa’s House: S1E3 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, What We Do In The Shadows: S6E4 (Hulu) with audio description.
I always seem to get international traffic. So, let me know why I should live in your country in the comments. Asking for a friend.
I suppose I managed to do this today, because I did want my readers to know that there’s an International show on MAX with audio description. this is very much a “if you build it, he will come” situation. If you want more international content described on a consistent basis, we have to create the metric that shows people that it is worth it to pay for the dubbing/description, or description with narrator talent doing the voices. Either way, give it a once over, and see if you like it.
And while I did watch with audio description on for CBS News, and I understand that election night coverage is live audio description, and very much a work in progress, it wasn’t quite as helpful as I had hoped. The problem really is that often they are pointing out maps or numbers we can’t see, and they don’t always use those numbers in their speech. but, audio description is designed to not trample the voices. In a weird way, we need sort of our own blind voiceover description that caters to us in a very specific way, asking what it is that sighted people benefit from watching this coverage, and what it is that blind and visually impaired people might want from this experience. I have a feeling, they want to know what is being pointed at. If a state is being referred, and the current numbers are being shown but not spoken, somehow that is actually why we’re here. Often times, the hosts just go off on a tangent, especially early on about “how we got here”, which really has no importance or bearing, but this is their moment to shine on camera, so they are going to use it. That can easily just be thrown to the side for actual election results. in my humble, and probably right opinion. But then again, after watching election coverage, I’m asking that deep “what even is life” question right now, so maybe I’ve been wrong all along and audio description should just sound like “beep bop boop”, and all of the narrators should be poor AI reflections of two-pack a day smokers that left their vocal recordings on a computer running Windows 95.
