Audio description developments from the 10th Languages and the Media Conference

Transcript

23 November 2014

Roberta: Every two years Berlin hosts a major access conference that looks at issues around audio description and access to media for disabled people. Media Access CEO, Alex Varley, attended this year's conference and is here to update us about what developments we're likely to see in audio description. Welcome, Alex.

Alex: Thank you, Roberta.

Roberta: Now, what's the story from Europe? Is audio description increasing?

Alex: Well, overall, yes it is, and it's happening in sort of fits and starts because, as your listeners would know, audio description is quite bit in England and the English speaking world and then various parts of Europe. There's little things happening, so some TV is increasing. There's some big EU funded projects like the AD Lab, which has flowed through and we're seeing more audio description in cinema. We're seeing it in museums and live performances like theatre and opera and a bit more on DVD. So it's very patchy but it is increasing, which is a very, very welcome sign.

Roberta: Alex, what are the main drivers of more audio description in emerging countries? Is this the same for the English-speaking world?

Alex: Well, no, it's not. What's happening in mainland Europe is a lot of the developments in audio description is actually coming through European community funding, so there's several hundred million euros a year to push things along and probably the biggest one is a thing called HBB for All, which is a TV accessibility program. Now, HBB is just the new form of television. It stands for Hybrid Broadcast Broadband and what that means is just the connection of the internet and TV in one integrated service. That’s been used as an excuse, really, to put a lot of funding into more training in audio description. So we're seeing a lot of universities in mainland Europe getting more involved in doing that and actually running some pilot projects in different languages. So as you can probably appreciate, for some of the smaller countries in Europe they don't have very large populations and very large blind populations, so they need some of this assistance to actually help those audio description services get going.

Roberta: One of the themes that come up a lot at conferences is automation. Is this impacting on audio description delivery?

Alex: Well, yes, because one of the big ways of saving money is to try and get computers to do lots of things. Now, of course, in audio description and in blind access generally, so we see this in print disability and e-books and this sort of thing, probably the only area where there's any chance of automation is what we call the use of synthetic voices. So that's where the description is read out by a computer voice as opposed to a human voice and, as many of your listeners would be aware, the technology in that area has got much, much better and they're starting to sound more like real people. In other areas, though, actually trying to do automated audio description where a computer works it all out and just does it that's nearly impossible because for a computer to try and decipher what's actually going on in a video image is incredibly complex. So most of the work in audio description is still done by humans and in fact the discussion at the conference was that is likely to be the way for many, many years.

Roberta: Of course that sort of automation in the theatre would be impossible too, wouldn't it?

Alex: Absolutely, yes.

Roberta: What are the likely flow-ons to Australia from all of this?

Alex: Well, of course, we are desperately wanting our own audio description service on television and what this movement in Europe is showing is that audio description is just a standard service that all sorts of countries are now embracing. There's plenty of product out there. It's just a question of actually getting it happening over here and the barrier is always money and interestingly one of the themes that started to be discussed this year was how you actually use audio description to make more money. One of the things that audio description is really useful for is being able to search through video material quickly. So when organisations are trying to make compiles of different bits of video they have or find things quickly through their search engines, audio descriptions helps that. So that's actually a way that they can make money and that encourages them to do more. So really Australia just needs to get on with it and accept the fact that there's plenty of product out there. All the problems have been solved. We just need the will to do it.

Roberta: So for more on audio descriptions developments you can call 02 9212 6242 or email Media Access Australia info@mediaaccess.org.au. Thank you for all of that today, Alex, and I'm sure we will be talking about this again in the future.

Alex: Yes, thank you, Roberta.

Roberta: I've been speaking with Alex Varley, CEO of Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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