For Film Lovers Who Are Blind, New Technology’s Out
of Sight!
By Deborah Kendrick 
'Rear-window' captioning
I had only one blind friend while growing up. She lived
across town and went to another school, so what little time we had together was
treasured indeed.
One summer night stands out in my memory. We spent the
evening unremarkably as most teenage girls do at a sleepover: We ate popcorn,
drank lemonade, giggled and watched late-night TV in her parents' living room.
A 1942 movie was on around midnight, and about halfway
through, we became interested. It was the romantic part that had captured us
– the tough guy, wildly in love with the woman from his past, now married
to someone else. Suddenly, in the penultimate scene, there was more music than
dialogue, and we were confused. Did she get on the plane or not? Because the
dialogue was enigmatic, the answer meant everything to the romance.
"What happened?" we asked one another simultaneously, and
then we began giggling when we realized that neither of us could tell the other
the answer. We were laughing, but there was a certain poignancy in that moment
-- a moment that I know now was a silent reminder to each of us that we were
excluded.
Movies and television programs have become even more
sophisticated -- and visual -- over the decades. Scenes change rapidly. Images
are superimposed over one another. Animation is artfully blended with real
life. To appreciate the medium on a par with viewers who have both sight and
hearing requires access to both audio and video elements.
Whether television is a priority in your life, it is a
significant part of our culture. At the office, the gym, the school playground,
or family picnics, TV and movies come up in conversations. For those who want
to take part in those conversations and who happen to be blind, the
possibilities for accessible TV and movie viewing have increased significantly,
albeit often slowly, over the past two decades.
WGBH-TV in Boston, the same public broadcasting stationed
that pioneered in the field of closed captioning for deaf viewers in 1972, was
again a trailblazer in 1990 with the launch of its Descriptive Video Service
(DVS), which makes television more accessible to people who are blind or
visually impaired. DVS incorporates an additional soundtrack into a program
that provides concise description of strictly visual elements. The narration is
tight. That is, it never steps on the dialogue or other relevant sounds of the
original audio track of a program but provides those key elements that a person
unable to see the screen would miss. When there is only music or silence while
on the screen a lover pauses to read a poignant letter found in the attic, a
burglar creeps into an empty house or two people recognize one another in a way
that is germane to the plot, the descriptive narration fills in the blanks.
Initially, DVS was incorporated into programs aired on the
Public Broadcasting Service. (It is available today on a broad variety of PBS
programming, from children’s shows such as “Arthur” and
“Clifford the Big Red Dog” to more adult content such as
“Nova” and “American Experience.”) Since then, its use has
spread to other networks.
It wasn’t long, however, before movies were clearly a
high priority on the wish list of visually impaired viewers. At first, DVS was
available exclusively in the home-video market. Hundreds of movies were
described and sold on VHS cassettes. In that format, a DVS movie has the
additional narration track incorporated as a permanent feature of the film. If
you bought a DVS copy of “Dirty Dancing” or “Mrs.
Doubtfire,” for instance, the descriptive narration was always there, even
if you had already watched the movie 10 times and didn’t want to hear it
any more. Today, movies can be produced on DVDs with the DVS track available as
a menu option, like captioning or foreign-language features, allowing viewers
to access it or not.
Perhaps the most exciting breakthrough for film lovers who
are blind was the arrival of descriptive video for first-run movies in
theaters. Through its Motion Picture Access (MoPix) project, WGBH developed
technology for delivery captioning and description in theaters. These two
systems, Rear Window captioning and DVS Theatrical, enable a viewer to access
the captions or descriptions while sitting in a theater. Other theatergoers may
not even be aware of the systems. With Rear Window captioning, the deaf movie
patron is given a small acrylic display mounted on a short pole. Captions are
displayed privately on the display but are not visible to others in the
audience. Similarly, the blind movie patron wears a headset that delivers the
DVS narration track that accompanies the movie. 
RWC and DVS Theatrical have also been made available to
make films accessible in IMAX theaters, national parks and Disney theme parks.
The technology was first available in 1997 at a movie theater in Sherman Oaks,
Calif., for the Universal Pictures release of “The Jackal.” Since
then, MoPix has worked with all major Hollywood studios, developing RWC and DVS
for about a hundred new movie releases a year. Hundreds of theaters in major
cities around the country have purchased and installed the equipment necessary
to make movies accessible to blind and deaf customers.
(When a theater adds the MoPix equipment, it is only
placed in one auditorium. In other words, although 20 movies might be playing
in a given theater, only one will offer captioning and/or description. In my
own city, for instance, there are four theaters in four far-flung sections of
town that have one auditorium each where the equipment is installed. That
means, on any given week, a blind person has four movies to choose from that
include description. Sometimes, the number is even fewer. When the most recent
“Harry Potter” film or the second installment in the popular
“Twilight” series was released, for example, all four theaters
carried that single title in their single auditorium, thus reducing the choices
of described movies to one.)
While going to your local cinema to see “Sex and the
City 2” or “Robin Hood” when it is first released is thrilling,
movies for entertainment and education also are an enormous part of our
culture’s home entertainment. Initially, WGBH marketed its DVS home videos
itself. Since the whole purpose behind making movies accessible is inclusion
(rather than a separate but equal approach), MoPix has finally secured
commitment by at least two major motion picture studios to carry the DVS
narration forward from the cinema to the movie marketplace. If you buy any DVD
copy, say, of “Julie and Julia” or “District 9,” no matter
where you purchase your copy, the DVS track will be available through that
DVD’s menu system. Although the number of DVDs released in this format is
small, it is steadily growing.
Of course, just as Kleenex is not the only producer of
tissues, WGBH is by no means the only producer of descriptive narration for
popular movies. Two online sources have gathered described movies from a
variety of sources (American, Canadian and British) and have made them
available to their blind subscribers as free downloads.
Serotek Corp., through its System Access Mobile Network,
was the first to make described movies available online. Since only the audio
portion of the movie (the original audio track plus description) is included,
the movies can be legally provided in this way. They are, of course, not
interesting to sighted family members and friends of the network’s blind
subscribers. For those who are blind, however, the ability to click on a movie
title and hear it in real time or to download it to an assistive technology
handheld player is nothing short of amazing. To access movies via System Access
Mobile Network, a paid subscription to the network (about $20 per month) is
required. For a free trial, visit www.serotek.com.
More recently, Blind Mice Mart, an online gift catalog
business owned by a man who is blind, began offering its customers free
downloads of described movies. Again, these are sound only, in MP3 format and
can be played either on a computer or any handheld device that plays MP3 files.
A subscription to the site is free. Visit
www.blindmicemart.com .for
information.
I’ve been a movie fan all my life. Yet, the first
time I ever watched an entire movie in a theater without once having to ask the
friend beside me to explain something visual was just five years ago. The
thrill of being able to just lean back in my chair and enjoy was so profound
that I almost wept. And it wasn’t because of any dialogue or description
heard through my headset.
Choices are still fewer than for sighted peers, but
genuine access to films is clearly here to stay for blind and visually impaired
viewers.
For information on current releases, movies coming soon,
available DVDs or a list of theaters in each U.S. city offering Rear Window
captioning and DVS Theatrical, visit www.MoPix.org.)
Deborah Kendrick is a newspaper columnist, editor and
poet. She is currently working on a biography of Dr. Abraham Nemeth
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