Fade To Black: The Audio Description Of Disney Film

“Stars twinkle above a moonlit valley. A river snakes below. Our view takes us beside the flag of Cinderella’s castle, while it flaps in the wind. Fireworks explode in bright colors above the tower. An arc of shiny dust flies over the castle. The handwritten logo of Disney appears below. Fade to black.” What I just read to you is the audio description of the Disney logo scene that most of you have probably seen once or twice before a Disney movie. The definition of audio description, video description, AD, or whatever you want to call it, is a narration track added to media such as movies and TV shows describing visual elements (like scene changes, entrances and exits, and body movements), and is intended to be used by the blind and visually

During the development of audio description in the late 1970s, 80s and early 90s, it was not fully accessible to its target audience. Audio description was first conceived in 1974 with Gregory Frazier's master thesis in broadcasting named “Television for the Blind”. It contained standards, practices, and rules for describing television and visual media to the blind. It wasn’t until the 1980s that actual audio description was produced, with the Media Access Group at WGBH, a local PBS station in Boston. WGBH became the main player in the audio description field, describing a small selection of TV shows and movies (about 6 a year) and creating AD systems for movie theatres and TV broadcasts. Even though AD standards and practices were established by now, content selection was slim and the descriptions were not accessible to many movie theatres or TV broadcast stations, as AD was not a requirement for TV networks at this time. In the next decade, however, AD production and accessibility would increase

This increase in described content was in part as a result of the FCC creating accessibility requirements for TV networks in 2000. The new rules required the top 5 broadcast and top 5 cable TV networks networks to show at least 50 hours of described programming per calendar quarter in the top 25 markets. This was updated in 2010 with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, making a “4 hours of described programing a week” rule and creating plans to increase national coverage of described content to 100% nationwide.The development of described TV was complemented with major movie studios committing to including audio description with the majority of their DVD/Blu-Ray releases as well as first-run movies in theatres. These companies include Disney companies, Fox, Sony/Columbia, Universal, among others. As a result, almost every one of major releases from these studios since 2010 has been accessible to the blind and visually impaired, so they can participate in movie-going just like the rest of the population. However, perhaps the most important development of audio description lies within Netflix. The popular movie streaming service recently (around mid-2015) started providing AD for 100+ movies and TV shows. Ironically, the reason for its inclusion in the first place was because of the Netflix original show