New trial of a combined audiobook and audio described movie experience

Transcript

15 November 2015

Roberta: Blind advocates in the UK are behind a new venture to trial providing a new service that is a cross between an audiobook and audio description from movie and to discuss this I'm joined by Alex Varley, CEO of Media Access Australia. Welcome, Alex.

Alex: Hi there, Roberta.

Roberta: This sounds intriguing but don't we already have audio description for movies, so what are they proposing?

Alex: Yes, so this is a new development and it's really to recognise that just providing audio description on movies for blind people isn't really commercially attractive for the producers of movies, so they are trying to do something a bit different that would be more mainstream and what they are going to do is combine both the audio description and the soundtrack of the movie, so you get the whole package, and repurpose that into a special service that is a bit more like an audiobook, so when you listen to it you have everything you need and the appeal of that would be to go beyond just blind people and to bring in a more general audience. So it's a combination of the two and turning it into a new product that will have wider appeal.

Roberta: Well, I think this will work because audiobooks are there now, aren't they? I love reading an audiobook.

Alex: Yes, that's absolutely right and people will remember that audiobooks originally started as a service for blind and vision impaired people and then the mainstream audience took them up.

Roberta: So who is behind this new approach, Alex?

Alex: Well, in the UK the main drivers of these kind of initiatives is the Royal National Institute for Blind People, the big blind charity in the UK, and they have combined with a guy who a runs a website called "your local cinema" which does all the listings of audio described movies and they have got the DVD producers and cinema producers and audio description companies altogether and they have kind of agreed that they will do probably a year-long trial just to see how it all works, so it's the industry working with the charities and the providers, so it's a good mix of the right people.

Roberta: So they are trying to move away from the idea that audio description is just for blind people, just like they did with the audiobooks.

Alex: Yeah, and as we said, you know, audiobooks became this mainstream product because if you think of getting all the elements of a movie apart from the vision but getting all the dialogue and good description of it that if you're then doing something in the garden or you're going to work on a train or you're driving your car or whatever you can listen to that and basically get the same flavour of a movie as you do with an audiobook and that's got a different audience and that goes way beyond blind and vision impaired people. So it's potentially commercially viable and, of course, the other advantage of that is that it then means that some areas like independent movies and arthouse movies are more likely to end up with audio description tracks on them because that's part of the process to developing this. At the moment that's the area where you're not really getting audio description happening.

Roberta: I love this idea. What are the next steps in the process?

Alex: Well, the players have literally just sorted this out in the last couple of weeks, so they are now going to get together and work out how to actually physically run it. As I said, they are looking at about a yearlong trial to do it, so they will gradually ramp it up and start to produce these tracks and start to push them out there. Now, of course, in England one of the great advantages is that people are really aware of audio description, even beyond blind people. So there's a kind of readymade promotion built around it, so I think that will really help it.

Roberta: Now, the big question, will this service be available in Australia?

Alex: Well, we don't know yet of course because they have literally just started looking at the service but I would imagine that like audiobooks it's just a digital file and assuming there's no real issues with copyright clearances and things like that they should be able to distribute that internationally. So I would hope that that service would become available here and nothing would stop blind and vision impaired people, and others of course, tapping into it here as well. Stay tuned.

Roberta: Yes, indeed, we certainly will but we're just going forward in leaps and bounds so, I mean, yes, it's slow but it's happening and I think that's just wonderful.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely.

Roberta: I have been speaking with Alex Varley, CEO of Media Access Australia. For more information on audio description you can call Media Access Australia on 02 9212 6242 or email info@mediaaccess.org.au and you can visit the website, www.mediaaccess.org.au. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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