Reid My Mind

Music begins
THOMAS: Welcome to the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats. These are the edited recordings of the Blind-Centered Audio Description Live Chats!
CHERYL: The live is the most fun part! We get together, we start with a question, and then we invite up anybody from the audience who wants to come and chat with us, agree, disagree, shed light on something that we hadn’t thought about before, which is Nefertiti’s favorite. [electric whoosh]
NEFERTITI: I’m Nefertiti Matos Olivares, and I’m a bilingual professional voiceover artist who specializes in audio description narration! I’m also a fervent cultural access advocate and a community organizer.
CHERYL: I’m Cheryl Green, an access artist, audio describer and captioner.
THOMAS: And I’m Thomas Reid, host and producer Reid My Mind Radio, voice artist, audio description narrator, consultant, and advocate.
[smartphone selection beeps]
CHERYL: Recording now!

NEFERTITI: As ever, our approach is that of centering the blind perspective. In this discussion, we will be yielding the mic to blind people first. How about we talk about blind centered, what that means, and what that means to us as the hosts of these chats, but also what that means for the blindness community at large? All right, Thomas, lobbing the ball to you. What is blind centered? What does it mean? What’s that about?
THOMAS: Ooh, I think I caught it.
NEFERTITI: Good catch.
THOMAS: Thank you. Cool. Good afternoon, everybody. Blind centered, yeah, let’s talk about that. So, you know, we’ve been doing these chats since the, I think toward the end of ‘22, when I looked back. It might’ve been the summer of ‘22 when we actually started, but they started posting toward the end of ‘22. And the idea behind it has always remained the same, is that our perspective is that we believe that when everything about audio description, the creation of audio description, like any good product, should center its targeted audience. And while we all know that audio description can serve many different populations, that centered population has been, and should always continue to be, blind folks. And I will say, I will try my best to say “blind and low vision.” But I want y’all to know that for me personally, I always, included in when I say blind, I’m including that spectrum, okay, that full spectrum of blindness, which includes low vision, from low vision to total blindness. So that’s what I mean when I say blind. That’s our guiding principle, the fact that the target audience for audio description is blind folks. WE use this centering to look at everything about audio description. I think everything, everything about it, everything that goes into the creation.
So, for example, the technology that’s used to create audio description. If we looked at that, we probably wouldn’t have inaccessible software that, companies using inaccessible software to create AD, whatever part of that software, whatever part of that business is. If targeting, again, centering blindness, that would mean that it would automatically be accessible. So, that’s an example of how that works, right? The creation, the delivery, the process of educating and training those who are producing audio description. Again, blind centered, employing and procuring, right? AD centering blindness. That’d be fantastic.
So, I think what we wanted to do today is to take a look at, again, this certification by first framing it with this perspective of blind-centered. I think it would be good if we first take maybe five, let’s say five issues that are of the greatest concern to blind people when it comes to audio description. What are five things that are the most pressing? I’m specifically talking to blind consumers of audio description that I wanna hear from y’all. But what are some of the most pressing issues when it comes down to audio description? What are some of the most pressing issues that you feel we face today?
JOLIE: There should be as much audio description as there is captioning.
THOMAS: Okay, okay.
KATIE: One of the things I thought of just now is not interpreting emotions or facial expressions, like just saying what somebody’s face is doing or what’s physically happening, not, you know, having someone say, “he looks worried” or “he’s angry.”
NEFERTITI: Gotcha, okay.
KATIE: You know, it’s like, what do they, you know, what’s their face doing?

NEFERTITI: Anybody else who identifies as a blind consumer?
GRETCHEN: Hey. Yeah, this is Gretchen Maune. And I just wanna say, quality control.
THOMAS: Quality control.
NEFERTITI: Excellent.
MITCHELL: Oh, that’s what I was about to say.

CARRIE: I think it’s this debate that we’re all having, which is fine, about text to speech versus real audio description with narrators, human narrators. And it’s the whole thing, like, some people think, “Well, it’s better than nothing, and it’s fine with me.” And other people it’s not.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
CARRIE: And I think how companies, I don’t wanna, say, pick on anyone in particular, but specific companies think it’s cheaper and it’s so convenient and will give more if we can just do TTS, and it’s fine.

NEFERTITI: So far, we have TTS versus human voiced narration, we have quality control, interpretation, and that we should have as much audio description as there is captioning. Anything else?
ROBERT: And censorship of explicit material as well as the audio description infrastructure not traveling from one studio to the other.
THOMAS: Okay. Censorship and passthrough. So, I’m gonna go ahead and do this list ‘cause I was pretty much working on this, and I think we all captured the majority of them. And this is not necessarily in any order, but I think many of us would feel that TTS is a high priority, right? So, the forcing of TTS on us. And I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna say it like that. I’m gonna collapse some of these into one because I think when we talk about, when Robert mentioned the censorship and all of that, I feel like this is about quality. And some of this stuff falls into quality.
NEFERTITI: Yes, and I would also loop in interpretation in there as well.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Censorship, interpretation, all of that goes into quality.
THOMAS: And there’s a bunch of other things that go into quality that I think we can, that we talk about and we think about: well written, culturally appropriate, well casted, all of that.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: All of that kind of goes into the quality. So we’ll say quality is one, but it equals all of those things. I’m gonna go and add significant and meaningful inclusion of blind professionals throughout the process.
NEFERTITI: Aha! Yes.
THOMAS: Oh, y’all okay with that one? Y’all okay with that one being in there?
NEFERTITI: Oh yeah!
THOMAS: All right. Cool.
NEFERTITI: Very okay.
KATIE: That’s a good one. Yeah, exactly.
THOMAS: Thank you. We’ll also say, I’m gonna add this one because I know that this is a thing. We still experience this. But I’m just gonna go ahead and say the overall experience of theater, in theaters and in broadcast and all of that, right? So, we’re talking about the experience. I think some of that is captured by passthrough. We mentioned the passthrough issue, right? That’s part of the experience because the AD just never made it there, but we know it exists already, right? Just never made it there. When you go to a theater and the theater gives you the equipment that doesn’t work, that’s part of the experience. All of that stuff. When you go to a theater and the treatment that you receive in that theater is beyond, eh, you know, it’s just not a comfortable experience when, you know, they say, yeah, they have AD on the Tuesday at 7:00 one time a month for this one show. And then when you get there, if you can get there, no one really kind of knows what to do. Like, that’s not a good experience. Yeah, they have AD, but it’s not a good experience. So I’m gonna add that in on our list because I think that’s a really important one.
NEFERTITI: And that’s for cinema and for live performance.
THOMAS: Absolutely. Anywhere that they say they have AD.
NEFERTITI: Right.
THOMAS: And then one that I didn’t hear, but I think y’all might agree, is increasing awareness among consumers, number one, because y’all know we’re here. We’re in the know. Even if we’re just looking at the States right now, but we’re talking about more than the States, there’s a lot of people who do not know or are not using audio description who are blind. So I think there’s a real effort that’s necessary to get this word out to them. But also, in terms of getting the word out, increasing awareness also amongst content creators. Because we know that if content creators were more involved in the process of creating audio description and looked at it as a creative process, a creative tool, I think we believe that that would increase both the quantity and the quality of audio description.
NEFERTITI: I certainly believe that. Yes.
THOMAS: Okay. Cool, cool.
NEFERTITI: I believe that any content that embraces audio description is enhanced by it.
THOMAS: Is enhanced by it, so the content creators need to know about it. So, that increase of awareness is really, really important. It goes beyond those two, but I’m really just kind of talking about those groups specifically: blind people and content creators in the long run. Because, you know, one of the things we talked about that would be great for audio description is—and any form of accessibility—is when we, accessibility from the beginning of the process, right? So that won’t happen, that will never happen until content creators are aware and accept it and view this as an art. We won’t get there until that happens.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: Cool. So, we have the five things, those five areas. That’s the framing that I’m talking about. That’s the blind-centered framing. So these are the things that are pressing to blind folks when it comes to audio description. Okay? So, that’s what we’re gonna work with today.
So now what I wanted to do was to say, okay, let’s use this as the context to sort of look at where the accreditation, the proposed, I’m not sure if it’s just proposed, but the document is serving blind-centered, serving these things. How does it help? How does it help reduce TTS? How does it help increase the number of blind professionals? How does it help increase the awareness of audio description? How does it help the quality of description? Including all of those issues, including cultural appropriateness, including making sure that it’s not censoring, including how does it help the passthrough issue?
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: How does it help all of that?
NEFERTITI: The impact.
THOMAS: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, that’s kind of how I wanna approach this. Because we can go through it and just be like oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s fine. We could do that. But I think to get to that sense of at least my question when it comes to this is, how’s this gonna help? How is this gonna help us as consumers?
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: How’s this gonna help us as consumers?
NEFERTITI: How does it benefit?
THOMAS: How does it help us as blind professionals?
NEFERTITI: Yes, exactly.
THOMAS: Okay, so.
NEFERTITI: How does it impact? How does it benefit? How does it possibly take away from?
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah. If anyone has anything specific to point us to where it does address any of these issues, I’m willing to hear that. I would love to hear that, ‘cause that would probably make this a little faster process. But until that, we’ll go through it. Let’s just go through it. I’m gonna go through a couple of things that I noticed, and then we can invite a couple of folks to come up and talk about some of the things you noticed. Because maybe you did notice if it does or if it doesn’t address any of these five things. And in general, how would it help those who are looking at audio description from a blind-centered approach as opposed to something else?
So, I wanna go over this one part that I noticed, and we could use this as an example that I thought was kind of interesting. Okay. So it says, “In media and in live performance practice, a CAUDES tries to fit the description into the pauses between the spoken or sung dialogue and critical sound elements. A list of visual elements to describe includes, but not limited to, actions, facial expressions, physical characteristics, body language and gestures, visual comedy and sight gags, dance movements, costumes and clothing, multimedia effects and lighting, settings and scene changes, props, including signage, characters’ descriptions.” Oh! There we go. There goes something. I mean, that might be some identity stuff. Might be, that’s kind of low, but it’s there, I guess, if that’s what that means. “Text or on-screen graphics.” Okay, cool. Titles, credits, all of that. Okay. Oh, why is that kind of low though? The character, the characteristics, if that is, I guess that’s identity. Y’all see? Nef, you think that’s identity and character? Cheryl, that’s identity? Is that, would that be identity stuff? So, would that be?
CHERYL: It doesn’t have to be.
THOMAS: It doesn’t have to be. Right.
CHERYL: No, I don’t think, at least the item that you read out doesn’t rule in or rule out anything, for example, race or ethnicity, skin tone, hair, disability, like you started to say, mobility devices. Or is it just “this is the mom”? All I can say is that particular item you read out doesn’t clearly answer to that. There may be something later in the document.
THOMAS: Let’s go to Jolie! Let’s go to Jolie. So, Jolie, is there anything that you see that is addressing some of the five concerns?
JOLIE: Yes, yes, yes!
THOMAS: Yeah.
JOLIE: You know what I found really exciting is at the very beginning where it says what the definition of a CAUDES, a certified audio describer specialist, they say can be blind, low vision, or sighted. I love the fact that that starts out with blind, then goes to low vision, then goes sighted. Because normally it would be the other way. And they may say, “and in certain circumstances people who are blind could also blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But instead, it starts right out with a certified audio describer specialist is a person who is blind, low vision, or sighted. I like that. I like that list.
THOMAS: Jolie? Jolie, who else? Who other than someone who’s blind, low vision, or sighted would it include?
JOLIE: Exactly, Thomas! Exactly. And so, I just, when you talk about blind centeredness, I think that that’s excellent. The stuff, by the way, that does cover the idea of ethnicity and how to describe different things like skin tone and hair and all the rest of that kind of stuff, that’s in a different part of the document. But I encourage everybody to read it with an open heart. There you go.
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I wanna get back to that, though, because I think I’m thinking of that line a little differently because, well, I definitely wanna point out that it says that. I definitely. But I’m more curious to how does it do it? How does it do it? Because there’s lots of things that say things, right? Because what I was getting at is that a person who’s doing audio description, from my knowledge, can only be sighted, blind, or low vision. I’m not sure what the other option is when it comes to, I mean, you know—
JOLIE: You know, Thomas, I’ve been in discussions where just to try to get somebody who is sighted to understand that a person who is blind can absolutely do audio description, that it’s not you’re editing something that somebody else has said or the people who are sighted who are helping you are really doing it, and you’re just taking credit for it, blah, blah, blah.
THOMAS: Yeah, I know.
JOLIE: I have been in those discussions.
THOMAS: Same. Same.
JOLIE: Yeah, yeah.
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JOLIE: I was in one this morning, so I’ll tell you I think there is an open heart here.
THOMAS: Okay.
JOLIE: But people should make comments and stuff like that ‘cause that’s what the group is, you know, is looking for and that kind of stuff.
THOMAS: 100%.
JOLIE: But, yeah, I liked that.
THOMAS: Cool!
JOLIE: Anyway, this makes me nervous. So, I’m gonna go back and hide out in mute land.
THOMAS: Aw, Jolie, I hope I’m not making you nervous. I hope it’s just the fact that you’re talking to other people that make you nervous. Not me. I hope it’s not me.
JOLIE: Oh, it would never be you because you have Charles Bonnet syndrome.
THOMAS:
JOLIE: And your show, that podcast. I have that. And I hated it my whole life, Thomas, until I heard your podcast on Charles Bonnet syndrome. And I know that’s not the subject at all, but now I can sleep because I don’t hold those pictures and images and light and stuff against them. And now it’s just, as you say, a reverie. It just changed my life. It was nice. It was nice.
THOMAS: Aw, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.
NEFERTITI: All right, thank you for sharing that.
JOLIE: All right, I’m gonna go hide. Bye-bye.
THOMAS: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Cool. So, that’s good. So Jolie looks at that as yeah, that’s blind centered because blind was mentioned first. Cool. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. So, I also wanna, I wanna see how ‘cause I think the how is important. The how is very important.
MITCHELL: I think this still is related, but one thing that stuck out to me was the on-screen text. And the reason that this sticks out to me is because there are certain shows, for example, Survivor, where they subtitle English, and sometimes it actually can become more difficult to understand what people are saying when two different people are reading or saying the exact same thing. And I wonder, I guess, what would be the best way or of how to go about understanding. Because obviously, you wanna have everything described, but also, there needs to be some sort of limit.
THOMAS: Are you talking in terms of who should be subtitling, who should be narrating that? Who should be voicing that?
MITCHELL: Well, it’s, I’m more referring to is when subtitles are narrated by audio description, when they’re being said relatively clearly by other people.
THOMAS: Mm!
MITCHELL: And I think that they’re subtitled to ensure that people understand what they’re saying.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
MITCHELL: But in some ways, that could lead to actually more misunderstanding.
THOMAS: And that’s the type of thing we talk about in other blind-centered chats that we have, blind-centered AD.
MITCHELL: Okay.
THOMAS: But here we wanna really focus on that. But I can definitely appreciate what you’re talking about. And just real quick, I think sometimes, you know, it’s a call that someone has to make on whether or not to actually go ahead and voice that. And to me, that’s an access issue, right?
MITCHELL: Yeah.
THOMAS: Like, sometimes our access issues can break someone else’s access or maybe annoy someone, but, you know, someone, a different person is being served by that. And so, I think we always have to kind of remember that.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. One size does not fit all when it comes to accessibility.
MITCHELL: Nope!
NEFERTITI: But thank you, Mitchell.
THOMAS: Yeah. Thank you, Mitchell.

CHERYL: I read through the draft criteria, and it is exquisitely detailed. So, kudos to the team for covering so many topics and so many angles. I will say, however, that the writing is often very dense and sometimes even academic, and there wasn’t, at least in my feeling, a real emphasis on plainer language. And sometimes I have trouble understanding reading, and I have to get somebody to read it to me. Or sometimes if writing is very dense, I have to take it and rewrite it in my own words and then cross check and make sure did I get the stuff right. And so, there may be some things that I don’t understand, so I can’t say they’re good or negative, because the writing of this document sometimes is too hard. And so, I wonder if, I’m not asking people to answer, but I do wonder if other people have experienced or may experience trouble knowing whether they can get certified or knowing what certification is about because the document is a little bit hard. I will pause and yield the floor to Scott Nixon.

SCOTT: I completely agree with Cheryl about the draft. The language in it was very, very dense. Very, very not necessarily hard to understand for myself because I’ve had experience with these sorts of documents in the past, but a plain-language version I thought would have been a great idea. Because in many cases in, you know, legislation or things like that in government and so forth, they have obligations to have a plain-language version that anyone can understand. So, creating a plain-language version of this would be good as well.
But the main points that I would like to bring up are this. Going back to the points that Thomas was mentioning at the start when I first came in, things like passthrough and cultural competency and cultural sensitivity and things like that, I don’t think that this is going to really help change much of that, simply because, yeah, okay, we want to create this overarching standard for audio description professionals. That is great, in theory, but which companies are gonna sign on to take this certificate or this training or whatever seriously enough to hire people who are going to go through it? And once these standards are adopted, are they only gonna be recognized in the United States, or are they going to be recognized in Canada or the United Kingdom or here in Australia?
At the end of the day, I in no way mean to harsh anyone’s vibe about this great idea that everyone’s having, but at the end of the day, at the moment, with no company willing to take it on as a standard, no company saying, “we expect you to have done this” or whatever, it’s just another piece of paper. It’s just gonna be another thing. Okay, great. Sure, great to have. And it will increase the amount of blind professionals who are out there in the industry, you know, like myself who is a audio description narrator. But it’s not gonna help with passthrough at all. It’s not going to help with TTS at all. It’s, you know, it may help with competency and cultural competency and things like that.
THOMAS: How?
SCOTT: But we….
THOMAS: Scott?
SCOTT: Yeah.
THOMAS: I just wanna back up because you said that it will increase the amount of blind professionals. How do you see that happening with this?
SCOTT: Because it’s going to be coming through from blind-centered theory, and the information is gonna be passed out to people who are blind or have low vision in the community, hopefully. And people who are blind or have low vision will be able to see it and go, “Okay, well, I’m blind, I have low vision. I think I’ve got a decent voice. I think I might be able to do this, so let’s”—
THOMAS: This is not about narrators. This is not about narrators. It’s only about writers and quality control.
SCOTT: Oh, right. My deepest apologies. I did come in a few minutes late. In that case, scratch that. Okay. We’re taking that off the table. Quality control. it may help with people who, getting more people who are blind or have low vision to come in for quality control. Scriptwriters, I don’t see it working at all. So yeah, like I said, at the end of the day, it’s going to just be another piece of paper. And I don’t see how without getting all the companies together, all the producers together and saying, “Okay, we’ve got this. We wanna get more blind people into the industry,” they’re just gonna turn around and say, “Why? We could do it faster with a sighted person. We could do it faster with a computer” or whatever. Because at the end of the day, it’s coming down to cost. It’s coming down to, you know, speed and accuracy and things like that. And I don’t think this proposal is going to improve standards. It really just comes down to the skills that someone is gonna be bringing to the table, and you can teach them all the skills in the world. There are still gonna be things that, things that slip through. And cultural competency, I don’t see it happening, you know, at all. So, yeah, that’s more than two minutes for me, I’ll shut up now.
NEFERTITI: Thank you for speaking up, Scott, for sharing with us.
THOMAS: Thank you. Thank you. I would want to get an understanding of how someone with no experience who’s interested in becoming, a blind person who’s interested in doing QC, let’s just say QC. Let’s not even touch on the writing. But I would really like to know how would a blind person interested in QC be able to kind of go through this process? Because it seemed like there was a significant, like the barrier of entry seemed relatively significant to get by. It’s really partially because even what Jolie was talking about in terms of getting folks to even be willing, I think there’s that barrier. But then the requirements in here, which I don’t have in front of me, but it was, you know, 100 hours of this or this and that and all of these various things that folks have to take and sign off on and whatnot seemed like an additional barrier. Plus, if we go into, which is not in here, whatever the cost of the trainings, there’s probably a dollar level that has to be reached, not only by the training, but then all of the other things that one has to have, submit to get this piece of paper.
CHERYL: So you said just for the purpose of discussion in this moment, let’s think about blind QC and not so much the writing, just for right now. The certification looked like you have to have X number of hours in, you know, film or TV, that kind of post-production, and X number of hours in live. If you were in the city where I live, I don’t know if blind QC is used in the scriptwriting process in the theatre. Now, you know that the stuff that I write and the stuff that I work on for film, we do employ blind QC. But if you lived where I live, where there’s no…. I don’t know, some of the live theatre describers who I know don’t work with blind QC.
THOMAS: Yeah.
CHERYL: So, for the blind QC specialist who lives in my town who wants to get certified, how on earth are they going to get their hours in the live space if it’s not being offered here? I guess remote is the only option.
THOMAS: I just wanted to point out something that I read in here that I find kind of related to what you just said because it says, it says here, “When possible, a CAUDES involves audio description patrons in the design and development of audio description language and encourages the collection and use of patron feedback.” When possible. I think this should be mandatory. I don’t think that “when possible” should exist, because that’s the problem. That’s the issue that you’re talking about right now, is that folks leave it. You know, it’s always possible. Blind people are all around the country. It’s not that hard.
NEFERTITI: And yet, it is always possible to leave us out, to not include us.
THOMAS: Absolutely. And I think, yeah, and giving this a, making this an option, to me, isn’t blind centered. That’s going back to what we started. That’s not blind centered for me. But we can go to Mitch. Let’s go to Mitch.
MITCHELL: Yeah, I agree with you on this because I’m personally, as someone who doesn’t really live close to any big cities or whatever, so I can’t exactly go places for QC stuff. But I think it’s, it does, I agree about the fact that it does…. You have the ability to leave people out, but also the ability to leave people in. And I agree. I think it is very important that this is mandatory. I just, I do think that that’s true. But I’m also kind of curious in just the, in the broader sense of like, you know, where would you go to get, who would you contact, and who would you contact for when these QC openings opened up?
NEFERTITI: Well, I think that speaks to a little bit about, so you go through this training, however much that will cost. You take the exam, if there’s a cost associated with that. And then will there be a job for you at the end of this? If we’ve established that companies are not necessarily jumping or chomping at the bit to accept this certification as a means to vouch for someone’s competency, then what guarantee is there that there will be a job, Mitchell?
MITCHELL: There isn’t. There isn’t if no one, if no one. Like, it’s just a piece of paper if no one can vouch for it.
NEFERTITI: If no one validates it necessarily.
MITCHELL: No one believes it.
NEFERTITI: That’s interesting. Something to think about for sure. Thanks, Mitchell.
MITCHELL: Glad to help.
THOMAS: So, we talked about the formatting, the accessibility of the document itself, industry adoption. We talked a little bit about, yeah, the fact that blind professionals are really barely being hired right now, let alone having to go and get some certification or even just having other things to do to try to get into the industry. That’s just, to me, it sounds like another barrier. It really feels like that. I should have said this off the top, that this is a critique of the document. This is not a critique of the intention behind the document. It’s not that. Because I think that chances are, most people affiliated with this process have good intentions. I believe that.
NEFERTITI: I agree.
THOMAS: We’re not talking about the intentions. We have to talk about where this is going to lead and how is this going to help? Again, how is this gonna help the quality of AD? How is this gonna help the experience? How is it gonna impact those five things? And so far, I’m not seeing how it’s going to do that.
NEFERTITI: So I wonder if in the last four years that this committee has been meeting, it’s a lot of people involved, which is fantastic, a lot of perspectives from all over the world, though I must note I did not—and Thomas and Cheryl, if you’ve picked up on this, let me know, or if someone in the audience has—I didn’t notice any involvement from Africa or much, if any at all, in South America, was it?
CHERYL: One from South America, none from Central America or Mexico.
NEFERTITI: Central America, ah. Okay.
THOMAS: I mean, I know there were blind folks involved in the process. I don’t know how many.
NEFERTITI: Oh, for sure. I’m not sure of how many, but I do recall going through the extensive list, loving the representation, the amount of people at all sorts of levels.
THOMAS: What part of that representation you talking about?
NEFERTITI: Blind specific.
THOMAS: Blind specific.
NEFERTITI: But also people from other countries.
THOMAS: Okay, okay.
NEFERTITI: People that I’m assuming are of color, some.
THOMAS: Hmm.
NEFERTITI: I don’t know anything about sexual orientation or gender identity, but I’d like to think that that was represented to some degree or another amongst those folks.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
NEFERTITI: It was a big swatch of, nice amount of people over the last four years, and I just wonder what if that time had been put towards these five umbrella type terms that we’ve put out here? The quality, the fight against TTS, the awareness of audio description as an option to enhance access.

THOMAS: We could put this in context because, well, I don’t know if it is in context, but it’s a part of it, I think. I think timing is an interesting part. Because four years, right? So that goes back to 2020. Mm. I think of the climate of 2020.
NEFERTITI: Oh, gosh. Do we have to?
THOMAS: Well, I mean, it’s a part, it’s a, I think that’s context.
NEFERTITI: No, it is, it absolutely is.
THOMAS: I think it’s context.
NEFERTITI: I jest, but the truth is, as much as we may not want to, it has been a tough time on us all.
THOMAS: Yeah, but even if we go back to that, and I’m thinking of what was taking place. Let’s just bring that down to this, right?
NEFERTITI: Yeah.
THOMAS: There’s the cultural stuff, right? There’s all of that. Absolutely. That is a part of this I believe, too, in terms of framing because nothing happens in a void, right?
NEFERTITI: Correct.
THOMAS: Audio description involves everything. Everything.
NEFERTITI: Yes.
THOMAS: But specifically 2020, there was a lot. That was the beginning, to a certain extent, of really sort of like this idea of blind professionals. That was 2020. That’s when that conversation was really up front and center. That’s when it started. And if it was going back before that, I’m not talking about two people somewhere having a conversation, I’m talking about a community conversation. The audio description community was talking about that. The audio description community was really talking about cultural competence, right? I think that’s important. But also, if we look at TTS. TTS was really starting to take place at that time. That was a little before. It was happening, but that was the time that I think we as a community failed to really get a hold on that. So Nef, when you talk about the amount of effort and where some of that effort could have gone, that could be, could really contribute to audio description, we gotta look at the time frame. We have to.
NEFERTITI: 100%. What else was going on? What else were people doing? What else was coming at us? And how did we respond?
THOMAS: I mean, you know, we, obviously, were in the pandemic and all of that, right? But this is, so this came out of during that time.
NEFERTITI: Well, that too. And blind participation too, right?
THOMAS: That’s what I’m saying.
NEFERTITI: That’s when we started being able to record from home.
THOMAS: Yes! Access was taking place.
NEFERTITI: And having more opportunities like that. Yeah.
THOMAS: Yeah!
NEFERTITI: Because everybody was cooped up.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Nobody could go out to studios and carry on, right? Like, we had to adjust.
THOMAS: We were having conversations about blind writers.
CHERYL: At the same time, this development of AI writing was exploding, so that is also kind of a threat to having human writers, blind and non-blind.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
CHERYL: I don’t see that addressed in the certification. It may be in the background in the committee who wrote these criteria. I kinda wish it was foregrounded, like really openly stated: “We don’t want AI writing audio description.”
THOMAS: I wanna point out this right here from the document. So it says, “A CAUDES should not allow personal bias to interfere with communicating the creative intent of the original work.” This doesn’t, I mean, it’s a good line, but there’s this thing called unconscious bias. When a person, when a person is not familiar with their bias, they can’t be expected, cultural competency can’t be this checkbox.
NEFERTITI: No.
THOMAS: It cannot be this idea that, “Okay, y’all gotta know what you’re doing. Recognize your bias.” Folks who have bias don’t believe they have bias. You don’t know it. And so, until they understand it, they can’t do anything about it. And if this document, if the training—
NEFERTITI: Some don’t know it. Some don’t care to know it.
THOMAS: Some don’t know. But who’s training? Okay, so what this document doesn’t say is who’s doing the training for these audio description folks, right?
NEFERTITI: Correct.
THOMAS: So if there’s gonna be a certified, if there’s gonna be a certification, that means certain trainers have to be certified. How are they getting trained to teach cultural bias? How are they how going to do that? It’s not in here.
NEFERTITI: How are they getting trained, who’s doing the training, and how do you check up on that?
THOMAS: How do you check up on that? Well, quality control.
NEFERTITI: How do you keep up? Yeah?
THOMAS: Quality control. But it has to be the full thing. So, it’s not addressed in here. So just the idea, I just wanna get this because I need more. And again, this is just my interpretation. But just because words are used in a document doesn’t mean that something’s being addressed.
NEFERTITI: That said, I would love to hear from people who were involved in making this, in putting this proposal together. I really wanna hear, and Thomas and Cheryl, you let me know if you agree, but I would love to hear from folks who were part of, like, where the kitchen was, right? I would love to hear from the cooks in the kitchen if we have any of them amongst us, and you’re comfortable speaking.
THOMAS: Before we do that, or when we do that, because I am open to that. However, I wanna frame that too because this is not, there’s no need for them to defend anything here, right?
NEFERTITI: Oh, not at all.
THOMAS: But if they could shed some clarity, that’s a different thing.
NEFERTITI: That’s what I want.
THOMAS: If they can give some clarity on something, right, that would be fine.
NEFERTITI: Thank you.
THOMAS: But there’s no, y’all don’t need to come up here and say, “Oh, we had great intentions.” I tried to establish that. I think you probably did. I think most of you probably did. I’m an adult. I don’t necessarily think everyone is, you know. But who do we have?
OLIVER: Yeah, I just had the thought that, I mean, it seems possible in theory that, you know, the creation of the institution of certification, this gatekeeping, this committee that has to decide on rules, requirements, and update them regularly, it just seems like a natural consequence of that would be more of a community, more communication and discussion among AD writers. And else equal, that actually could accelerate the adoption of progressive ideas. I mean, even if it’s not said in the draft document, isn’t, can we rule out that it wouldn’t generate more community? And I mean, do we know there would not be democratic or sensitive to movements that support the principles, the goals?
THOMAS: Walk me through a scenario, Oliver. Walk me through a scenario where the certification creates more community. Oliver, I’m not sure if you were here during the beginning framing that in our blind-centered approach.
OLIVER: Well, yeah, I’m saying specifically with respect to these goals like cultural competency, which you would like to see embraced by the AD industry overall, and you know, which are not percolating through, I think, one could argue that that’s because there isn’t really a community of AD writers. But if there were a community of AD writers and somebody heard and was persuaded that it was a good idea to be more culturally competent, then they would tell the other people in their community, and maybe that would become a popular idea. And maybe they would talk, they would talk to the member they know that’s on the committee, or they would host their own continuing education lecture because continuing education is a requirement in certification, as I’m familiar with it. So yeah, I am speaking with respect to the particular goals of, you know, the five ones. I’m sorry I can’t rattle them all off, but it seems worth considering that this is a way of helping.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. Thank you, Oliver, I just wanna say really quick interjecting here. Remember, folks, your comments, though we will be sharing this audio and transcripts on the Reid My Mind Radio podcast, we do highly encourage you to do your own work in commenting directly to the organization. That’s comments@ACVREP.org, putting in the subject line CAUDES, very important. CAUDES, at comments@ACVREP.org. We still have time till March 31st to get your comments in, folks. March 31st, 2024, to get your comments in to the committee, or to the ACVREP, I should say, the organization.
I will not speak for Cheryl and Thomas, though I’d like to think that you join me in this. I would love to hear from folks who were part of putting this together. As Thomas so beautifully said, this is not confrontation. This is not come up here and defend your work. Not at all. We believe that your intentions are good, and that overall, this is to legitimize audio description as a field, as a practice, as an art form. Though I agree with Thomas, we are all adults here, right? Not all of our intentions are purely good necessarily. But beside all that, I would love to hear from folks, particularly blind folks, right? Blind-centered. Where are the blind folks who were part of putting this together? I just want to, again, encourage any blind folks who are here with us today who were part of putting this together, who had input, who had a seat at the table, let us know. Please speak to us.
How does this all work? How does it come together to improve the quality, the access to the experience?
Whether we got to it here or not today, whatever your thoughts are, and if you haven’t yet, or if you want to go over it again, that proposal is nice and front and center at the ACVREP.org website. But to comment, that would be comments@ACVREP.org with the subject line of or that includes the word, I should say, and if you just wanna make this the subject line, that’s fine too: CAUDES. Very important that that be in the subject line: CAUDES. Let them know.
THOMAS: You know, I feel like this just has a different vibe, this whole idea of the certification. It doesn’t really feel like it’s going to really help. It almost feels like it’s a reversal. It’s a reversal a little bit. Like we’re going cordless, and this is really putting a landline back in the house.
NEFERTITI:
THOMAS: I’m sorry. That’s my silly joke. But yeah, there you go. But I do encourage everybody to go ahead and whatever they feel, by all means, send it in and let’s hope for the best.
JOLIE: You know what? I’m looking forward to getting a certification. Because I feel that if I have a certification, I can say to people, “You know what? Yeah, I’m blind, and I have a certification. I’m a certified audio description specialist, or.” I’m dyslexic. I have trouble with all the letters and stuff. And I think it will make a difference. I absolutely encourage everybody to read this and comment because they need our comments.
THOMAS: Yeah!
JOLIE: If we’re gonna hold people to the fire to or say good things or whatever it is one way or another, it has to be based on, as you say, authenticity.
THOMAS: Jolie, I just wanna say thank you for that, and I wanna let you know that I hope it works out for you. I really do. And for whoever is impacted by that, if that so be. That is truly what I hope for, because I do want you to have an opportunity. However you get that opportunity, I would love for you to have that. So, thank you. Nef, Close us out.
NEFERTITI: Yeah. Just please remember that you do have till the 31st, the 31st of March, 2024 to get your comments in. Be that against, be that for, whatever it is. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your effort. And I agree with Thomas. Whatever comes of this, we hope it is for the best. After all, this is an art form: audio description for us, by us. It should always be about us, and I can only hope and trust that anything of this kind to legitimize it more, or whatever the intentions are, makes it better, improves it, and makes it more open to blind and low-vision folks, who this is all about period. All right, everybody. Talk to you at the next chat!

— Sci-fi sound rises and music begins…
THOMAS: Cool. Well, that concludes this week’s conversation. Why don’t y’all keep the conversation going on social media.
CHERYL: Use #ADFUBU, for us by us, #DescribeEverything, and #AudioDescription.
NEFERTITI: And hey, you know we’re out here, right? Mmhmm! Gathered and galvanized y’all. If you haven’t joined us yet, what are you waiting for?! You can find us in the LinkedIn Audio Description group and the AD Twitter community. We know that your participation will only make these spaces better.
Music fades out!

Hide the transcript

TR:

Happy New Year Reid My Mind Radio Family!
I’ve missed Y’all.

I know that may sound weird because I don’t personally know everyone who listens and or or reads the podcast.
Yeh, I said reads, shout out to all of those who consume the podcast transcripts.
Access is dope.

Even though I don’t personally know everyone consuming the podcast, knowing that you do rock with Reid My Mind Radio means we share something.
There’s an exchange of energy taking place.

When I get close to shutting the doors on this thing, something keeps me motivated to rock on!
Y’all are a big part of that.
Thank you!

Twenty twenty four will make 10 years that I’ve been producing audio as Reid My Mind Radio.
It’s also twenty years of becoming Blind.
It’s why I knew I needed to spend some time focusing on what I personally think is the best thing about this podcast – the people.
I want to produce more of the episodes that really dive into our experiences.

I want to focus on adjustment and how art can aid in the process.
I sort of see adjusting as an art form.
There’s no one way to do it.
However, there’s so much creativity involved that I thought it’s worth exploring.

Ten years of podcasting, twenty years of adjusting to blindness … oh and here’s the big one,
Music begins: “Five, Ten, Fifteen Twenty…” The Presidents

TR:

The one I’m the most proud of, y’all ready… thirty years as a husband to my wife Marlett.

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro Music

TR:
Five years ago, I did something I could have never imagined doing when I was a young kid.

In fact, even as an adult, I would have never thought it would be something I’d do.

In 2019, I celebrated 15 years of being Blind!

“Hold Up, Hold Up. Hold up! Say What? “The voice of a small child.

TR:

Celebrating life, my family, clarity of blindness.
(Laughs)
When have you heard that phrase before? Clarity of blindness?
It’s true.

Five years ago and still today, I’m aware that my response to becoming Blind could have been the beginning of a lifetime of running.
Running from blindness that is.
A never ending marathon of doing everything possible to try and escape it.
That sounds exhausting.
But there’s lots of people needlessly sweating, breathing hard attempting to get away.

Meanwhile, it’s always there whether they acknowledge it or not.

But this isn’t really about them.
Well, not really.

This podcast has allowed me to paint profiles of people I find compelling.
It’s also one of the ways I explore aspects of disability.
My way of not running but rather embracing disability in a way that makes sense for me.

This season, I’m challenging myself to create a sort of self-portrait.
That’s not to say I’m doing a whole season on my personal experiences even though some suggested they’d be interested in that.

Over the years of speaking with various people on and off the podcast about disability, I realized that although we differ demographically, we can see some aspect of ourselves in each other.
More than often we share the emotions that come out of similar experiences.
Sometimes, we may see things in others that we don’t like or fear in ourselves.

In this season called The Art of Adjustment, I’m speaking with four individuals all with their own stories of adjustment.
Every episode this season, featuring a guest, will be followed up with a continuation of this self-portrait episode.
To be honest, I have no idea what that will be.
I’m not producing the self-portraits in that straight forward way.
Rather, I’m confident that the experience of adjusting to disability inevitably connects us and
therefore I’m sure there will be elements of our conversation that run parallel to my life.

As I record this episode, I’m thinking I’ll use sound bytes of a guest in the self-portrait episode or maybe it’s something else.
I really don’t know, we’ll find out together.

For the record, this is not about motivation or inspiration.
I’m not someone interested in motivational speaking.
In fact, I don’t really even know what that means.

Clip from Saturday Night Live:
“My name is Matt Foley. And I am a motivational speaker.
(Laughs from audience)
Now let’s get started by letting me give you a little bit of a scenario of what my life is all about.
First off I am 35 years old . I am divorced and I live in a van down by the river.
(Applause and laughs from audience)
Now you kids are probably saying to yourselves (yelling) hey I’m going to go out and get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket. Well I’m here to tell you that you’re probably gonna find out as you go out there that you’re not going to amount to jack squat.”
(Laughs and applause from audience fades out)

TR:
I know there are lots of people with that in their linked in profile and claim to inspire, but what exactly do they do?
Ableism just totally messed up the word inspirational for me. I know many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You’ve probably been called inspirational for taking a walk, shopping, brushing your own teeth.
Inspiring for actually doing something, perhaps? Maybe it’s just my own issue.

I do want this podcast to encourage those adjusting to disability.
Even though circumstances and details are different, I think those adjusting to any situation can be encouraged.
But, my main concern are those with disabilities.

There’s an alternative to running away from disability.
Stop, turn around and confront it head on.
See what’s there.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to be Blind, how to be disabled.
But I am here to tell you that there’s real value in examining what it means to you.

So I’ll examine in real time

In this season, I’m speaking with those who in their own way have a variety of outlets that allow them to embrace and explore their disability to determine what it means to them.

Whether through artistic endeavors like writing or film making, social entrepreneurship, sports and more, all of my guest joining me this season have so much to offer the world, their communities and you.

?- Music Begins: a heavy synth opens into a driving drum beat.

For those new to disability, no matter what that is, my wish is to be a part of you regaining your ability to imagine your future.

Recently a Reid My Mind Radio Family member reminded me of a time in my life when I couldn’t see myself in the future.
I may have mentioned it here before.
I compare it to being in a hallway with no doors.
Before blindness that hallway for me had lots of doors.
Each was an opportunity, a place for me to explore if I so chose.
Even the doors that were closed were in my mind never locked.
Being in that hallway, stuck with no doors or opportunities was I guess my feeling despair.
It was awful.
I don’t want that for you.
I don’t feel that way anymore and you won’t either.

rock with me and the rest of the Reid My Mind Radio family and I know one day you’ll realize your doors have returned.

In this season, I’m going to bring you what you’re used to from this podcast ; compelling people impacted by all degrees of blindness and disability in general.
Then in a continuous episode I’m calling my self-portrait, I’ll tie some aspect of the conversation with my awesome guests to my 20 years of blindness

If you know of anyone you think can benefit or appreciate what we’re doing here on R double M Radio, please let them know.
We’ll be back publishing episodes at 8 PM on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month
Tell them they should come rock with Reid My Mind Radio available wherever you get podcasts.
We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com
Just remember, that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample: (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.
” Slick Rick)
Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro
Peace!

Hide the transcript

Music begins
THOMAS: Welcome to the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats. These are the edited recordings of the Blind-Centered Audio Description Live Chats!
CHERYL: The live is the most fun part! We get together, we start with a question, and then we invite up anybody from the audience who wants to come and chat with us, agree, disagree, shed light on something that we hadn’t thought about before, which is Nefertiti’s favorite. [electric whoosh]
NEFERTITI: I’m Nefertiti Matos Olivares, and I’m a bilingual professional voiceover artist who specializes in audio description narration! I’m also a fervent cultural access advocate and a community organizer.
CHERYL: I’m Cheryl Green, an access artist, audio describer and captioner.
THOMAS: And I’m Thomas Reid, host and producer Reid My Mind Radio, voice artist, audio description narrator, consultant, and advocate.
THOMAS: Hey, Nef, why don’t you tell people how they could join the live recording?
NEFERTITI: That’s really simple. Just follow us on social media to keep up with important details, such as dates, times, and what platform will be using. On Twitter, I’m @NefMatOli. Cheryl?
CHERYL: I’m @WhoAmIToStopIt.
THOMAS: I’m @TSReid, you know, R to the E I D.
[smartphone selection beeps]
CHERYL: Recording now!

NEFERTITI: All right. Here we go! So, as a reminder, we are here to talk about what it means to center blind people and how that affects the quality of audio description. What exactly is allyship? How can our allies be effective using their position and privilege to open doors and then get out of the way? Or as I like to say, “Great! You’ve got clout. Now get out!”
THOMAS: [chuckles]
NEFERTITI: That said, plus, we’re also going to get into what to expect from BCAD, Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats in the future. And now to Thomas to kick us off.
THOMAS: Cool. Cool. So, why don’t we start with Blind-Centered Audio Description? So, since we’re back, you know, this is our, I guess, second season, if you will, second year. Just talk a little bit about maybe how we started this and why we started this, and then we can get into the conversation. But I think it’s important for everybody to know. The reason we call this Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats, well, let’s take that, the chat, we’re talking. That’s simple. The blind-centered audio description is really what we feel about audio description in general and how it should always center that target audience, which is blind folks. And when I say blind, I just wanna make it clear, I’m including low vision. So, I don’t necessarily always say, “blind and low vision.” I’m including that in “blind.” Okay. So yeah, the idea there is that if you are going to create audio description—and audio description is a service for, and it’s a art for folks who are blind—and so, when we’re creating it, that’s who we should be thinking about.
So, we shouldn’t necessarily be thinking about…we shouldn’t be thinking about, “Oh, I have to do this because the government tells me so or because my boss told me so.” Eh, that’s not too great because the product isn’t going to be that great if that’s where you’re coming from. But what you should be thinking is, “What are the needs of folks? What does the community want,” right? That’s a big deal now. We get audio description. We have conversations, and sometimes folks who are dominating those conversations aren’t necessarily the users of audio description. That doesn’t seem cool! [laughs] It doesn’t seem smart. If you had a product, don’t you want to hear from those who are using your product? Well, that’s what blind-centered is all about: keeping that in the target there.
So, allyship. We’re talking about allyship, so I figured, why don’t we do a little bit of a definition of allyship? I looked it up on WordHippo! WordHippo says that an ally is, “a person or an organization that cooperates with or helps another in a particular activity,” okay? That’s a basic definition, right? So, you could say, what does that help? So, we got “partner, associates, colleague, confederate.” Not crazy about that one. That brings up some other stuff for me when I hear “confederate.” Just saying. It’s America. “Accomplice, collaborator.” I like accomplice. I like collaborator too. “Comrade.” That’s cool. “Deputy, helper.” Meh. “Supporter, accessory.” That’s cool. “Aide, backer.” And here’s my personal favorite. I don’t know about y’all, but this is my personal favorite: “henchman.” [delighted laugh] I’m just digging that one. You’re not an ally. You’re my henchman!
THOMAS and NEFERTITI: [laugh]
THOMAS: And sometimes in life, you need a henchman. You need a good henchman to get you by sometimes, I’m just saying.
NEFERTITI: Heck, yeah.
THOMAS: You never know.
NEFERTITI: Two thumbs up to that one. [laughs]
THOMAS: You know what I’m saying? It could come in very handy to have yourself a henchman. [laughs] Not that I know anything about it! Anyway. But, you know, an ally is really about someone who has privilege but chooses to stand for and with usually a marginalized community, right? And so, we all in our lives, in different roles, can play the role of an ally, right? So, when we talk about marginalized communities, there’s many different marginalized communities. So, you know, I as, myself, as a blind man, blind cisgendered man, could be an ally for women, right? That would make sense. What’s interesting is if we talk about some of the steps to allyship. And then what I think is, so these are just general, right? These are very general. But I think what could be fun and interesting is if we apply them to audio description after that. All right? So, here’s some steps. So, ten steps I found. “Number one, listen.” I love that one. I love that one. And so, real quick, Imma tell you a real quick story. So, a few years back, I think it was… I think it was John Legend, the artist, right, the musician. And he was talking about how he was very much into prison reform and wanted to become an ally and be all about it. He spent the first I think it was like a year or two going to meetings, going to all these various things, learning about it, and never saying a word, just listening. And I always remember that because I was like, wow, that’s the way to do it, right? That makes total sense because you’re new. You’re new. You’re new to this, and so you’re just all about learning. And so, that’s what that listening was. “Get educated.” That’s a part of that listening, that listening process. Three, “Get involved.” All right. We can talk about that again. Remember we’re gonna talk about these specifically around audio description. Four, “Show up.” I like that. Five, “Speak up,” aight? Six, “Intervene.” Now intervening, you know, you just don’t intervene. You gotta intervene with permission. So, just don’t go saying something. “Welcome discomfort.” Now, that’s a real good one. That’s a real good one, because, you know, if you’re not of a community, and you’re learning, there’s some things about that, especially if we’re talking around disability, that non-disabled folks are just uncomfortable. Well, sit with that. That’s good. Sit with that uncomfort. Eight, “Learn from your mistakes” ‘cause you gonna make them. And yeah, I said “gonna.” You gonna make them. [laughs] Nine, “Stay engaged.” Real, real important. Ten, “Donate!” That’s a good one. That’s a good one, ‘cause everybody and every process and every movement needs some money.
So, if we think about this from audio description, and y’all help me out. And this is a question that I wanna ask the audience, so in prep for y’all, if you have any stories around allyship, specifically around audio description. But, you know, if there’s something that makes a point that is non-audio description related, I think we’re open to listening to it. But let’s keep some of these steps in mind around audio description. So, listen. I can even just say listening to audio description. If you’re an ally, and you don’t listen to audio description? You don’t even ever watch a film or a television show with audio description? Well, how you an ally?! You know? I think you should be familiar with it. But it’s also listening to the people who are talking about it. And so, listening, again, remember, this is blind-centered, listening to blind people talking about audio description and what they care about, what’s important to them.
Getting educated. Well, what are some ways you can get educated about audio description? One is if you’re in the house right now, I appreciate it. And hopefully, we’re gon provide some of that education. I think, you know, the series of Blind-Centered Audio Description is one way. Listening to Cheryl and Nefertiti when they’re on a panel. Those panels are great, and they are great on them, and you’ll learn a lot. You know, there are podcasts, and yes, Reid My Mind Radio is one of them. But there are other podcasts too, that you can learn. I think Reid My Mind Radio’s the best one, though, but I’m just gon say that. Anyway, you know?
NEFERTITI: [imitates boisterous air horn] Ber-ber-beeeeer!
THOMAS: Thank you, Nef! [imitates air horn]
NEFERTITI: [laughs]
THOMAS: [chuckles] Get involved. Let’s think about this one. Because how do you get involved with audio description, right? How do you get involved with this? So, let’s say, obviously, if you are someone who is making audio description—you’re a writer, you’re a narrator, whatever the case may be—that is one way of getting involved. Obviously, listening and watching something. But what are some other ways to get involved in audio description? I think there are communities. When we talk about live audio description, there are many types of venues that offer it that might be looking for volunteers. Especially for those who are, you know, who know about it and are familiar with it, there’s opportunities there in museums, right?
Advocating. That’s another way to get involved. Just if you go to a theater, you go to a show, and they don’t. You could ask, “Do you have audio description?” “Oh, what’s audio description?” Bam! Tell them about it, right? That’s getting involved. Speaking up. That’s that one. I think that’s a great example there. If you go to a theater, even if you don’t consume it, I think that could be really fascinating for someone who is an ally to just, “Hey, do you have the audio description?” Even if you are, you know, you might ask for it or just ask to see if they have it there. And again, they might not know what it is. Or you can even go through an experience of what often happens in a theater environment, movie theater, right? Ask for it, go into the theater. Does it work, or do you have to run back out, right? Go through that experience, see what that’s like, and then maybe have a nice conversation with the manager. You can do that. You can do that, too. That would be great. Is that too much to ask for? What do you think, Cheryl, Nef?
CHERYL: No, I don’t think it’s too much to ask somebody, even if they don’t intend to use it, to be like, “Hey, do you have the equipment?” And I would even add, “Do you charge the batteries?”
THOMAS: Mm.
CHERYL: “Does your staff know where to find it? And who do I talk to if the equipment isn’t working?” Yeah.
THOMAS: That’s great.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, absolutely. “Does your staff know the difference between the setting for people who are hard of hearing versus audio description for blind and low vision folks?”
THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah. You know what that reminds me of?
NEFERTITI: It’s all part of advocating, educating, all of it.
THOMAS: All of it. All of it. And it reminds me Somebody was telling me or us that, how they don’t like to go to the theater because, for them, okay, I have to either, you know, the public transportation might be the situation. I get an Uber, I pay that money to get to the theater, and so many times when you get there, it doesn’t work, right? So, imagine if there’s an ally who’s kind of doing that work. And so, now you can go there because that work is done. Because often, you know, I can’t tell you how many times when audio description, when I first started going to theater, our local theater, and it was new, how many times I went there to watch a film and never got to watch it with audio description but got free passes to another film. [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Yes. And may I just say, free passes for what? So, I can come back, and you fail again?
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: You don’t want a free pass. You want to enjoy the experience you paid for at the time you paid for it.
THOMAS: Yeah. I want the free passes too, though! [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Well, you know! All right.
THOMAS: Plus I had, you know, they were little at the time. My kids were little, so. Yeah, we were using them free passes! [laughs] But it wasn’t cool to get them the way we got them. So, that’s part of that speaking up, and it’s also part of the intervening there. That’s a really, really cool way of intervening because you don’t have to necessarily ask because you’re just sort of taking charge. You’re in there. But other ways to intervene, you know, you might be in a live theater environment, and maybe you’re sitting next to a person. Maybe that person is not with you, but they’re having some problems with the AD equipment. And you might be able to help intervene, right? Maybe because that person might, you know, if they have to get up and go find a manager, if that person’s by themself, well, that could be a really time-consuming task for someone who’s blind to get up and try to go find a manager, where for someone else it might be really quick and easy. So, intervening and helping out in that situation is probably a very welcome thing.
NEFERTITI: I can tell you personally how many times I’ve wanted to attend a live performance—I’m really into live theater, Broadway, off-Broadway, etc.—and they only offer one audio described performance per season? Two is a lot to ask for. I live in New York City. I am in the mecca of live theater, and you mean to tell me that you only offer one to two performances with audio description? That’s not okay. So, how about intervening and advocating for more options, more availability of audio description?
THOMAS: Instead of that one show on a Tuesday at 7:35, right? [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Oh, if only! It’s usually like on a Sunday at matinee or something.
THOMAS: Oh, okay. Okay. Tuesday was a inconvenient day for me, but yeah. [laughs]
NEFERTITI: No, that’s true, too. The time can be inconvenient. The day can be inconvenient. Whatever it is. You know, a lot of us work, or a lot of us wanna spend Sunday resting or with family or whatever the case is.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Why are you pigeonholing me? Shameless plug. Cheryl’s podcast, Pigeonhole.
CHERYL: [laughing] Stop!
THOMAS: [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Check it out.
CHERYL: I have to say one of the reasons that they do that, that they only offer the one or the matinee or they don’t offer options, one reason is they will say, “Well, we don’t know that the demand is there.”
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm.
CHERYL: So again, even though I may not utilize that equipment and use the audio description, I can go in there and say, “Are you offering this? I know this is of interest. I know this is a good thing to offer,” and just, you know, we need to build the numbers up so that people know the demand is there.
NEFERTITI: Yeah. And if you build it, they will come. If we have more options available, guess what? More people will show up just by virtue of you giving them options that they can make fit into their schedule.
THOMAS: Yeah. And we can take that from the live theater space to the online streaming platforms, you know? If there’s a platform that you’re on, and maybe you’re watching something, and it said it had audio description, but it’s not there, it’s not working, do you just let it go? “Aw, that sucks.” Because, “Well, okay. I guess I just have to watch it without. That’s fine. I really wanted to watch it with, but I’ll just watch it without because I can.” Well, why not call the customer service and advocate on behalf of folks, right?
NEFERTITI: Or write an email.
THOMAS: Or write an email.
NEFERTITI: “You say you have audio description? Actually, you don’t. Most of your titles don’t. Or none of your titles do. What’s up with that?”
THOMAS: Yeah. Ooh-wee, what’s up with that?
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm!
THOMAS: So, learning from your mistakes. This is a good one, because I think it’s inevitable that well-intentioned folks are going to make some mistakes. And I think everybody has to leave some space for the mistake that’s gonna happen. You know, have some grace for that individual. But at the same time, if that individual makes that same mistake again, [laughs, sighs] that’s not cool. That’s sending a whole message that you, either you do mean to send, but you probably don’t. And so, learning from your mistakes could be a really big thing, you know. And that could be as simple as how you talk about audio description online. Like, are you, again, are you centering yourself, or are you centering the blind consumers in how you talk about audio description?
NEFERTITI: The blind consumers who, by the way, audio description was made by and for.
THOMAS: Correct.
NEFERTITI: Also, you make a mistake once, that’s understandable, reasonable, forgivable. But you make it more than once, and that’s a choice, y’all.
THOMAS: Yeah. That is. You’re right. You’re right. Three-strike rule. Do y’all use the three-strike rule?
NEFERTITI: Two for me.
THOMAS: You got two strikes? You playing softball.
NEFERTITI: If that.
THOMAS: Yeah, that’s the softball move.
NEFERTITI: If that. Depending on what it is, you get one!
THOMAS: You ain’t playing with two strikes. Okay.
NEFERTITI: Mm-mm.
THOMAS: Okay. Okay. Cheryl, you a two-striker or a three-striker?
CHERYL: You know, I tend to give a lot more strikes just because I want time. If the person’s willing to dialogue, I want time to uncover, “But why does this keep happening? Or what do you need to make this happen better?” Like, maybe I’m not giving enough instruction or enough context. And really trying to uncover people’s motivations, name the elephant in the room. I feel like if somebody refuses to name the elephant in the room, then you get all three strikes at once. But I do leave, especially ‘cause I’m neurodivergent, I do leave people a little more time to strike out a couple of times.
THOMAS: Mmhmm, yeah.
CHERYL: But, you know, I think refusing to learn from your mistakes and say, “Well, I’m not gonna advocate anymore, you know. I’m just gonna leave this,” then, like you said, Thomas, you’re centering yourself. You’re not being a good comrade. I like the term “co-conspirator, henchman.” [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm!
CHERYL: If your mission and your values are, I will be an ally or a co-conspirator with this person or this group, and you make a mistake, recenter yourself on what that mission was. “No, I am gonna be an ally. I made a mistake. I’m not gonna beat myself up. I’m not gonna say I’m horrible. I’m not gonna leave the movement.” I do think it’s possible to recenter yourself on the goal if you are being an ally. And that is how to be an ally, is to recenter yourself on the goal, not on yourself.
THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah, I love that you said that, recentering yourself, because that goes to the next one, which is staying engaged. And that’s exactly it. Because sometimes folks get discouraged, get disappointed, again, centering yourself, “Eh, I’m taking my toys, and I’m leaving!” You know, that type of thing. “Aight, bye. I guess you wasn’t really about this.”
NEFERTITI: That’s right. It’s not about you, right?
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah.
NEFERTITI: It’s not about you. It’s about the general movement and moving it forward.
THOMAS: Yeah. Which is about everyone. Cut 00:28:12 – 00:29:18)
The final one is the idea of donating, and I think this donating when it comes to audio description again could be, there could be many different ways you do this. So, for example, if you know someone who hasn’t experienced audio description in a live theater space, whether that be live theater or whether that be a movie theater, perhaps you might want to donate a ticket. You know what I’m saying? Especially if you were the one. Maybe you went to that theater like we were just talking about and found out that this theater does have it. Well, maybe you wanna donate to someone, say, “Hey, go ahead and go check out audio description. I know you never checked it out because for most of your life, you’ve been experiencing inaccessible content. But hey, this is accessible, and I know they have it here, and it works. Go check it out. Here’s a ticket for your movie.” How cool is that? That’s an ally. I think that’s pretty cool.
NEFERTITI: That’s really cool.
THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Also, you can donate your time.
THOMAS: There you go.
NEFERTITI: We’re all donating our time right here. We make zero, zero on these conversations, but they are super important. It’s a labor of love, and it’s a labor of progress that we’re trying to accomplish here. So, if you know, let’s say, of a podcast, become a guest, donate some time, you know. You being here, listening to us or telling somebody about the Reid My Mind Radio podcast where they can hear the replays of these, what do we call them, episodes? Gatherings?
THOMAS: Yeah, they’re the Chats.
NEFERTITI: Yeah, Chats. Oh, hello! It’s right in our name. Thank you.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Tell them to tune in if you find these conversations, these chats of value. That’s donating, donating knowledge.
THOMAS: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so, yeah. So, I wanna hear from you all if you have any stories or if you have any comments or if you have any examples of some of these. There’s lots of conversations taking place today around the topic of audio description. Ah, I don’t know if I wanna say a lot, but there’s definitely more than there were a few years ago, right? And I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’re all even in terms of do they all come from a blind-centered approach? I wouldn’t say that was the case. I’ve seen some, I’ve heard talks. I’ve been around some things that the focus is definitely not on blind people. And sometimes that could make sense. But I think even in those conversations, there should be some centering, right? So, meaning if we’re talking within the industry, and let’s say it’s about narrators or it’s about the production of audio description, and unfortunately, there’s not that many blind folks involved in that, which we will probably be talking about again here at some point. But even in that instance, I think there are moments in the conversation where the centering of blind people and the consumers, right, blind consumers should be taking place, and I don’t see it happening. And so, maybe some of y’all have seen things like that, have witnessed that. I wanna hear about them if you wanna share them. Always looking for that.
So, in a situation like the one I was just kind of talking about, when there are panels, when there are panels, when there are these conversations about audio description, and let’s say they are inclusive of blind people, you know, how should they work? How should they work? When we talk about allyship, we talk about passing the mic, right? That’s a reference to letting those who are impacted have the say. Their voice needs to be heard. Amplify those voices, because even in something like audio description, the voice of non-blind people hits harder than blind people in the public. There’s a louder voice. There’s more, more folks will listen when a quote-unquote “expert” who’s not blind is talking as compared to another quote-unquote “expert” who is blind. Because the blind consumer is an expert. Is an expert. We can get into the weeds of that expertise, right? So, I’m not saying that they are that knowledgeable of the process, but they are often, not everyone, but many of them are quite experienced in terms of consuming audio description. And that means a great deal. That means a great deal, but it’s not often considered that way.
So, in a situation like that, I think we’re looking for more than input from that blind person sitting on that panel, right? It’s not, it shouldn’t be the non-blind person taking up all the airspace, taking up all of that, right? So, we have to be mindful of that. And I think we should be critical. We should be critical when we watch these things, when we’re listening to anything, when we’re watching anything, a panel, whether it be a podcast or whatever the case may be, I think we should be critical about that and say and talk about it, right? And again, you don’t have to be controversial, but it is something that we should be comfortable in critiquing and talking about. But another question could be, you know, what does performative allyship look like within the AD space? Because maybe you’ve seen that. And by that, I mean, you know, is this person really an ally, or are they just trying to get attention for themselves? We don’t have to mention names, but if we’re critical and if we’re honest, I think we’ve probably seen it. [laughs]
NEFERTITI: All right, Courtney, you’re up.
COURTNEY: So, I’m a learning experience designer, so we are constantly making videos for training. So, some people are like, “Well, you can write for accessibility and then you won’t have to use audio description.” Is that something that is acceptable?
THOMAS: Mm. It’s a cool way to go, but I don’t think you probably, especially if we’re talking about video content, chances are you’re not gonna eliminate the need for AD in total, right?
COURTNEY: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: And so, what I would add to that is it’s not only the writing for it, because that’s definitely something you can do, but the planning in general, right? So, if there are things that are going to need explanation that aren’t included in the writing, are you leaving space in the edit to have time to provide that audio description, right?
COURTNEY: Yeah.
THOMAS: So, yeah, I would add that into the mix. Those things together I think would work well.
COURTNEY: Okay!
THOMAS: But I don’t think when we’re talking about visual content, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on. Especially around learning, right, educational stuff, if it’s eye candy, right? You know what I’m saying, right when I say the eye candy thing?
COURTNEY: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
THOMAS: If it’s just eye candy, then perhaps that doesn’t need to be described. But if it is something that is going to impact the person’s ability to learn and get the lesson, those things need to be described.
COURTNEY: Gotcha.
THOMAS: And that’s often, it’s gonna be said, it’s going to be communicated visually, right? There’s often some of that stuff that’s gonna happen. But I’m not totally against the idea of writing for accessibility at all.
COURTNEY: So, maybe a mix of the two is probably optimal if there are a lot of decorative things. I feel like a lot of times it’s just illustrations with a [laughing] slightly waving hand, you know?
THOMAS: Okay, yeah. Yeah.
COURTNEY: So, that doesn’t add to the learning experience, but maybe adds something for those who are sighted.
THOMAS: Yes. Yeah.
COURTNEY: All right. Thank you.
THOMAS: I think the takeaway for Courtney that I would want you to recall is that one of the most important parts is to have that whole video QCed, quality controlled, by a blind person. And so, you should be able to get some real feedback as to how effective that really is, right?
NEFERTITI: Again, thank you so much. That’s a great question.
COURTNEY: Thank you.
THOMAS: Yeah, it was a great question. Courtney.
COURTNEY: Thank you, guys.
THOMAS: Thank you for your bravery!
COURTNEY: All right. Thanks! [laughs]
THOMAS and NEFERTITI: [delighted laugh]
NEFERTITI: All right, Scott, you’re up.
SCOTT: Hey, guys. How’s it going?
THOMAS: Scott Nixon.
SCOTT: Scott Nixon all the way out, all the way out here in Australia. I have a comment and possibly a question for the panel and everyone else as well. When it comes to advocating for audio description, what do you do when you just keep hitting the wall, you know? You talk to a company or a streaming service or whatever, and they just keep coming back with these vague, nebulous answers that don’t really give you what you want them to, want them to give you. And you keep explaining. “No, I mean this, this, and this.” And they just keep coming back with the same old, “We value your input, you’re a valued customer,” and things like that. Because I’ve been dealing with one of the major streaming services over the past two years now about their failure to pass audio description through to their streaming service outside the United States and Canada. They just don’t provide the AD anywhere else in the world, and I don’t understand why.
I’ve talked to them again and again and again, and they just keep coming back with responses A, B, and C that just don’t go anywhere. And it’s gotten to the point where dealing with them was affecting my depression and anxiety to the point where I’ve just had to say, I’ve had to throw up my hands and say I can only be an ally for so long. I had to cut off communication with them, and I’ve actually unsubscribed from their service until they can prove to me that they’re actually going to do something about it. So, what do you do when you reach that burnout phase of allyship where you’re just not, you just can’t, like, lick a watermelon into a different shape? And yeah, so, that’s basically the comment and the question. So, Broken Eyes out.
NEFERTITI: I wanna start by saying good on you for meeting your own personal needs.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
NEFERTITI: That’s absolutely crucial that we take care of ourselves. So, whatever that looks like for you, in this case, unsubscribing and taking a break, kudos to you. But once you feel up to it again, maybe not start back up with the same person or company, organization, whatever the entity is, but maybe taking on someone or something else. But do come back. Take your rest, do your self-care, fully lean into your break, but do come back. We all need that spirit, that energy. That’s what I have to say.
SCOTT: It can definitely be a case of pick your battles and know when you need to take off ‘cause, you know, it was getting to the point where I wrote a three-page email that in no way could be considered abusive or heavy handed or anything like that. But I just went back through and read it before I sent it, and I just went to myself, “No, this is not me. This is not my voice anymore. You know, this is, this is coming from the bad place” type thing. And so, that’s when I decided that I had to take a step back. And yes, I definitely will come back and challenge things maybe from a different perspective, different tactic, or something. But yeah, just I hit that burnout phase, and it just, yeah, snuffed me for a while.
THOMAS: Yeah. So, I agree with all the self-care. Absolutely. But one of the things that I think we have to remember, especially in this day and time, is that social media effect and the ability to tag and put these conversations in public. And that right there is some pressure. You may not think it is, but it is often pressure. I remember I had a issue with Amazon. And this wasn’t even anything around audio description. It was like a product or something. And I was sending emails and calling, and all I did was at them on Twitter, and bam, they were right in my DMs, [laughs] right in my DMs, and like, “Hey, send us this, this, and this. We can get this resolved.” And it got resolved. And it’s like, wow. Okay, this means something. So, that’s one thing.
I’m gonna forward you a link. And it’s a couple. Cut 00:50:21 – 00:50:24) They wrote up that they were going through a similar thing, and it had to do with passthrough to was it YouTube or something? I don’t remember. But a station wasn’t passing through AD, and they wrote it up. They tracked every single call they made, and they wrote the whole thing up. And I think they posted it to their website. They contacted other people within the industry of AD who started to use some of their influence, and they’re having progress now, right? And I think part of that is the writing up of everything as well as the sending that to other people. Because there’s a big difference when you don’t have things written up like that, and you just like, “Yeah, this company’s” dah dah dah dah dah. I’m not saying you do that, but it sounds like that to people. Sometimes it comes across like, oh, this person’s just complaining. But when you have things documented the way they did, then it takes on a whole different thing. So, I’ll send you that just so you can see that. And maybe you might even wanna connect with them because they might be able to give you some good advice.
The other thing is that when you are contacting a company like that, one thing that helps is if you can—this is hard—but sometimes you can just, you looking for that internal ally that, literally what we’re talking about today, that person on the inside who actually cares. And I saw that in action years ago because my Fox affiliate, it was the X-Files movie that was coming out, and it was supposed to have AD. This was some years ago. And I turn on Fox. I was a big X-Files person back in the day, and they didn’t have it. And so, I call them, and I just happened to make my way to someone within my local Fox who knew the person within there who they said, “I don’t know about the audio description, but I know about the captions.” So, they got me to the captions person, and so the captions person ended up just kinda taking it because they cared about access. And so, they got it resolved for me the next day, and it was so cool. But it was only because somebody gave a “beep,” right? And so, if you can kinda finagle. And you know, you a charming dude, so I feel like you could probably do that. You could probably, you know, work something with the intention, maybe not just getting it solved right there, but maybe having a different intent is to find someone who gives a “boop” within the company, you know? But again, going back to your self-care, that’s the first, and then all of this stuff comes later. Imma send you that link sometime. I’ll send you that probably tomorrow.
SCOTT: Yeah, no worries. Thanks, mate. I really do appreciate that. And yeah, just, yeah, I agree that finding a way to find the person who will give a hoot about your situation and wanna help is definitely key. I do have a few contacts who may be able to help me once I’m back in a better mindset. But yeah, for now, yeah, it’s difficult, but I don’t wanna have to give up. But at the same time, I know that it was starting to affect other factors in life. And yeah, so, sitting back, taking self-care, going and exploring my newfound ability to play video games again after 25 years is what I need to do right now just to take care of myself.
THOMAS: There you go. Do what you gotta do.
NEFERTITI: Thanks to audio description!
SCOTT: Dang right. [laughs]
THOMAS and NEFERTITI: [air horns]
NEFERTITI: Thank you so much for your contribution, Scott. Always valuable.
SCOTT: And I just wanna say, you guys, it is so great to have you all back. Thomas, Cheryl, you guys are absolutely fantastic, but I just, I can’t help myself. I have to give a special shoutout to Nef. You have been smashing it lately with your advocacy and all the work that you have been doing, Nef. I’ve just been so impressed by everything you’re doing at the moment, and just please keep crushing it because we’re all just loving what you’re doing.
THOMAS and CHERYL: [enthusiastic air horns, laughter]
NEFERTITI: Thanks, you guys. Thanks. You’re gonna make me cry. Thank you so much! Appreciate you.
THOMAS: Nef is killing the game right now! She’s killing the game!
THOMAS and NEFERTITI: [laugh]
NEFERTITI: Thanks so much. All right, Renee, you are up!
THOMAS: Renee, who?
RENEE: Arrington-Johnson.
THOMAS: Aw! That’s who I was talking about! [huge laugh]
RENEE: I know! [laughs] Scott, I understand completely. My battle with the streaming service started over two years ago, and I did take a break because they frustrated me, and I had to regroup and rethink. And I took an approach that I had learned at work about how to document every step of a process. And just to put it really quick, I had a supplier that was doing work for me, and we set up a purchase order where they were docked every day they were late. And I documented everything, and instead of paying $65,000 for the service, we paid $3,000. So, that’s just, that was what was my idea for what I did, me and my husband, when we wrote that paper. But you do have to be in the right headspace to be able to do it. But besides that, I did wanna give a positive example.
THOMAS: Oh, cool.
RENEE: A few years ago, when I lived in Michigan, we had attended a movie theater, and the equipment was not working. The audio description was not working. And the one iPad that they had that was supposed to set everything up to fix things was broken. And I was saying, okay, for a $500 iPad, you’re not gonna provide this service. And I was so frustrated. I contacted a member of the talent for a local network for local ABC who was an ally to people with disabilities because he had a granddaughter with SMA. So, he was very in tune to people with disabilities ‘cause he advocated a lot for her. So, he actually knew the owner of the theater, and he contacted them, and he let them know what my complaint was ‘cause I had put it on Twitter and had tagged him. And he had the owner of the theater call me, and they purchased extra iPads and invited me and my husband back to the theater. And that ally made a big difference for me with that experience. So, they really can, you know, allies can really make a huge difference when they are committed to the cause.
THOMAS: Fantastic. Fantastic story. Yep. There you go. And you did it on Twitter. [laughs]
RENEE: [laughs] Yeah, I gotta find something new ‘cause I don’t even get on there anymore. I don’t know what to do.
THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah.
RENEE: But thank you guys for doing this. This is really great.
THOMAS: Thank you for joining us, Renee. Appreciate it.
RENEE: Okay.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. Really appreciate your contribution. Keep up the great work. Thank you.
THOMAS: You know, one of the things I was gonna say is that that documenting is something that you can start from the beginning. You know, like, the first call you make, just open up a little, you know, text, keep a text file, whatever, and just put the date, the name of the person that you talked to, what happened, what you said, what the result was. “Okay. I gotta call them back tomorrow.” Put them back. Next time you call them, same thing. Write that date. You know, the documentation doesn’t have to be a real big project. If you wait till the end, then you’re gonna try to have to remember things. But if you could just do that right when you’re gonna start that process, it’s cool. It really does work. It’s very helpful on many levels, so, especially just remembering someone’s name. It’s a big difference when you can say, “Oh no, I spoke to John on this particular date, this time.” “Oh, John Such-and-such.” “Yes.” Boom.
NEFERTITI: Cheryl, any thoughts from you? We haven’t heard from you in a while.
CHERYL: Yeah, well, I was being a good ally and listening.
THOMAS: [chuckles]
CHERYL: And I said that on purpose to be silly, but also to remind people how very, very easy and tempting it is to ask for your plate of cookies for doing something that was asked of you. [laughs]
THOMAS: Mm.
CHERYL: So, just again, like it is that feeling when you want to be an ally and you name yourself an ally to a community, but nobody in that community knows that you’re an ally, you can get that energy, and “I wanna show off! I wanna post on social media how much money I donated to this fundraiser, and I wanna tell everybody about….” There’s kind of a rush with that. But it’s not a… that’s not an ally move. That’s not a comrade or co-conspirator move. So, yeah, I just made that joke just to sort of (Cut 01:00:49 – 01:00:52) recenter….
THOMAS and CHERYL: [laugh]
CHERYL: The blind-centered, the ally is not the center of the show.
CHERYL: Cut 01:00:59 – 01:01:13) ‘Cause I feel like I see it, but sometimes it can be really helpful to name it. You get a feeling in your stomach like, “Is that person, are they helping? Are they making it worse?”
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm or standing in our way?
CHERYL: Mmhmm. I love what Nefertiti just said about standing in the way ‘cause I think about, I have people open doors for me, and then literally stand in the doorway, and I can’t get past. And then they’re mad that I wait for them to move. And I know I’m not the only one who experiences that, but like, literally, I opened the door for you and then stood in your way, and now I’m mad at you. But an example of performative allyship I’ve come across is somebody maybe sharing something on social media like, “This is about blind” something, but they didn’t read the whole article. They didn’t carefully analyze who wrote it, you know, what is the source, was this actually debunked on Snopes already? ‘Cause it was. But just, I think it’s real performative to go out there and just share literally everything you come across that’s about blind anything, AD anything without carefully figuring out what is the message of this thing, and what will I be promoting when I share this?
THOMAS: What about someone who is talking that good talk, and then at the same time sharing images with no descriptions, sharing videos with no AD, not even recognizing it, not even providing any sort of context or anything like that. Like, you know, to them, they miss it at that point, but they still believe that they’re an ally [laughing] of audio description. But meanwhile, they’re sharing stuff without description.
CHERYL: Well, yeah, ‘cause you’re not an actual person, Thomas. You’re just an audio description consumer.
THOMAS: Oh!
CHERYL: So, I’m gonna clock in. I’m gonna do my audio description for your movie. But beyond that, you don’t exist to me, so it doesn’t occur to me that I should write image…. Obviously, I’m playing.
THOMAS: [laughs]
CHERYL: But I do feel like it’s that rehab and service provider model of accessibility.
THOMAS: Mm, talk about it.
CHERYL: Like, “I provided my service. I’m all done. But, you know, that one hour that you spent listening to AD and watching that movie, you are still a whole person the other 23 hours of the day. And I’m spending the rest of the 23 hours getting in your way, but I’m satisfied that I helped for that one hour.” And I think service providers of whatever sort have to always remember, if you are providing a service, you’re providing it to a complete and whole person and entire communities of complete and whole people.
THOMAS: If you’re in audio description, if this is your job, and you have [sighs] no relationships whatsoever with people who are blind, does that make a difference? NEFERTITI: I think that for people who want to make a name for themselves or get notoriety, get a pat on the back, “You’re so wonderful! Look at what you do for these poor blind folk,” you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a so-called ally and then be on some “boop,” right?
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
NEFERTITI: You can’t have it both ways. Talk about performative. “Oh, I’m behind the scenes doing X, Y, Z thing, but really, I’m about the business side of it all. I’m about that money, right? It’s just a job to me in action. But in the performance of it all, I’m here to help y’all poor blind people.” No, no. People see that. People notice that. Maybe not right away. Maybe not everyone.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: I’d like to think that it does catch up with folks.
THOMAS: So, it’s okay if it’s just the job. But don’t say you’re an ally if you have something else.
NEFERTITI: Exactly. Exactly.
THOMAS: Exactly.
NEFERTITI: If it’s a job, then be about that job. That’s fine.
THOMAS: That’s a job. So, I mean, I think that’s a really good thing. And the only thing that I would add to that person who it’s just a job, and that’s fine. If it’s just a job, it’s just a job. That’s okay. But you should still be centering blind people in that work. That’s what I would say. But it doesn’t mean that, you know, you’re an ally. You just do the work.
NEFERTITI: 100%.
THOMAS: Yeah. I don’t necessarily think everyone needs to be an ally if they don’t feel it, right?
NEFERTITI: No, of course not. I’d rather you not.
THOMAS: Exactly.
NEFERTITI: I’d rather you’re not because you’re probably gonna be really crappy at it.
THOMAS: Right, right.
NEFERTITI: You’re not about it. Okay.
THOMAS: You’re not about that life. [chuckles]
NEFERTITI: Right! And you have every right. That’s fine.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: But again, then get out the way. Stop it. Stop being a fool. Stop being a hypocrite. We see you. We’re blind, but we see you!
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah.
CHERYL: [laughs]
NEFERTITI: Okay?! All right. [laughs]
CHERYL: I think for somebody who does wanna be an ally but is doing this, I think that from that list Thomas started with about listening, I think you gotta listen to yourself, too. Ask yourself, why is this so hard for me? Why do I want to be an audio describer, but I never want to do any alt text on social media or X, Y, Z? And not in a judgmental way. But really, I need to listen to myself. I need to ask myself what are the barriers? Why is this happening? And then, yeah, maybe your answer is, “Actually, I’m not gonna be an ally.” And I’m gonna stop there ‘cause Gary’s raised a hand.
GARY: This conversation is just so parallel to sign language interpreters in the Deaf community.
THOMAS: Mm.
GARY: And, you know, I’ve talked in the past with other audio describers about the certification process for AD and how that’s similar to the early days of sign language interpreters. And I think the development of the profession is fairly parallel and similar, but also the whole conversation around ally building, that are interpreters truly allies to the Deaf community, or are they just clocking in, performing a job? “Here’s my bill. See ya later.” And I think there could be some fascinating discussions between interpreters and audio describers and perhaps Deaf people and blind people—which may well be happening, because I’m probably not the originator of the thought—you know, just that how service providers are more than service providers. So, whether we’re providing interpreting or audio description, and being clear, at least in your own mind, how to evaluate yourself, you know, how to analyze: Am I truly being an advocate or an ally, and what does that mean? And how do I own it or not own it, but at least how do I be honest with myself? What are those clear expectations from the Deaf community, the blind community, so that I can be checked and checked myself?
THOMAS: Mm, yeah. Check yourself. [chuckles] Very important.
GARY: Yeah.
THOMAS: Yeah. I like the idea of that sorta conversation between the two communities because I did something like that on the podcast where, you know, it was around the idea that lots of blind folks refer to captions almost like the North Star, right? The Holy Grail. Like, “Oh, captions are ubiquitous, and captions are great. They’re everywhere. We need to have that. We need to be more like the Deaf community.” And I’m like, “Have y’all ever heard about the captions?” You know, because they’re not, there might be captions quote-unquote “everywhere.” And you know, that’s not true, but the quality of those captions aren’t always great. And so, that’s something that we need to know because we’re not just shooting for the quantity, we’re shooting for quality. So, you know, those discussions are really important, especially when you’re trying to, when you think one is a model that you should follow for your own access, right? So, I like that you brought that up, Gary.
GARY: Yeah, just to clarify, this is Gary Morin, here in Maryland.
THOMAS: Yes, sir.
GARY: Yep! We’ve just chatted. It was great turning on and hearing your voice tonight.
THOMAS: Very cool.
GARY: And for everyone else, I am an accessibility coordinator at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, to introduce myself.
THOMAS: Thank you.
NEFERTITI: Excellent. Thank you so much.
GARY: Yeah. I love interacting with audio describers and learning more and more and just learning my way about it. So, I’m glad to be here.
THOMAS: Thank you, sir. Thank you for being here.
NEFERTITI: Glad to have you.
GARY: Thanks!
NEFERTITI: Cross-disability.
THOMAS: And thank you for being active in your learning. I think that’s really cool.
GARY: Yeah. Yeah.
NEFERTITI: 100%.
THOMAS: Very cool. Very cool. So, I wanted to ask another question. I think questions are good, right? Like, all of these conversations sort of start with a question. And I think allies and consumers, all of us, we need to be asking better questions of ourselves. Sort of like that example that I just gave, like sometimes we just repeat things, you know, without ever really, really thinking about it. Or things get just said, and they just get repeated, right? There’s phrases that people repeat all the time around audio description. It’s like, “Oh, you just saying that.” What does that mean, you know, when folks say, this is just something I came to recently in terms of, you know, we talk about we want the equal experience of sighted people when we go to a theater and while we watching visual content. That’s not gon happen. [laughs] It’s not gonna happen. I don’t even think the best audio description is going to be able to do that, right? So, why are we repeating that?
NEFERTITI: Yeah, no. As somebody who has repeated things in the past that I have since then thought better of or now have lived experience from which to speak from, I can say that no. Repeating just because a high-profile person has taken this approach or has made up this punch phrase or catch phrase, whatever the phrase is, it’s not okay. I think what is okay is to examine, to question, to really dig deep, like, is this really true to me? Is this really what I believe? Is this really what I experience as a blind person, especially, not for nothing, if it’s a sighted person saying these things? We are all about blind-centered here, yes? So, as a blind person in this community, what’s my fellow blind person saying, thinking, experiencing? And what about me? Is this true to my experience? How? And if it isn’t, should I really be repeating this, perpetuating this, bringing focus to this, and bringing more focus on this person or people or organization? Mm. Cheryl?
CHERYL: Yeah. Slightly different thing that popped into my head was a good ally move, if you’ve got a question, and you need to check a source or you need more education on something, I think a real good ally move is to speak to somebody and get the resources and get guided to the education you need without bugging the people in the community you’re trying to be an ally to, to educate you for free.
NEFERTITI: For free.
CHERYL: For free. I think there’s some steps to work through first, and that’s where you can speak to another ally or another comrade or co-conspirator to get directed. And then you are coming with more education and more self-reflection before you come into the community with deeper questions.
NEFERTITI: And it’s okay to humble yourself a little bit. It’s okay to admit what you don’t know or that you’ve made a mistake or that you’re afraid to make a mistake. Aren’t we all? Haven’t we all? But respect to those who do better, who try harder, try at all, right?
THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, and, you know, it applies to all of us, the questioning: questioning of ourselves, questioning of others. You know, everything you just said goes back to those steps, those points for the steps to allyship, right?
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: Listen, get educated, get involved, show up, speak up, intervene, welcome discomfort. That’s a big one. [chuckles] Learn from your mistakes, stay engaged, and donate. So many of those were wrapped up in what you were just talking about, Cheryl, [laughs] in that example, even the donate. Because, you know, you’re asking someone for their time and for their education. You know, sometimes it might just be asking. That person might be like, “Nah, it’s cool,” you know? But just offering, that could be a, that could go a long way, too, so. And so, we’re gonna continue this conversation. And what I can guarantee you is that whatever avenue we’re talking about when it comes to audio description, can you guess who’s at the center? [laughs]
CHERYL: [imitates air horn]
NEFERTITI: I mean, I don’t know. Could it be blind people?!
THOMAS: Yeah! How’d you know?
NEFERTITI: I mean….
CHERYL: She was listening!
THOMAS: [laughs]
NEFERTITI: And I’m a genius! But no, I was listening.
THOMAS: She is a genius!
NEFERTITI: I live this every day. Blind and low vision people at the center. Always! Always.
THOMAS: All day. Every day. Yeah. Yeah. I hope folks will stay tuned. Nef, tell them what’s the best way of keeping in touch with BCAD Chats and learning more? And let’s say they had a suggestion. If anyone has a suggestion or something that you’re interested in, how could they let us know?
NEFERTITI: Absolutely! Well, we are on the socials, y’all: LinkedIn, X. That’s mostly where we are, right? We have an email address now. BlindCenteredAD@gmail.com. (Cut 01:21:49 – 01:21:57) BlindCenteredAD, I was just about to say, all one word @gmail.com. (Cut 01:22:17 – 01:22:30) Hit us up. You know, if you didn’t speak today, but you want to let us know your thoughts, we’re open. Any suggestions for future chats? We are here for it. Anything you wanna complain about, we will take that too. We are here for all of it. So, BlindCenteredAD@gmail.com. And if you’d like to follow me or just whatever, you’re big on the socials, look for me on LinkedIn: Nefertiti Matos Olivares. It’s a long name, y’all. N E F E R T I T I M A T O S O L I V A R E S, or the first three letters of each of those names: @NefMatOli on X.
THOMAS: Very cool. Very cool. Cheryl, you wanna give your?
CHERYL: Yeah, I’m just here. I just, I just, I don’t go anywhere. I’m just, I’m just right here.
THOMAS and CHERYL: [chuckle]
CHERYL: I just follow Thomas and Nef and share what they write. [laughs]
THOMAS: Yeah, I share what you write.
THOMAS and CHERYL: [laugh]
NEFERTITI: I do too. And since the three of us will be, you know, receiving and reading and the like, we will take turns responding. We will sign our first name, so you have an idea of who responded. And don’t be surprised, if it’s a thread, if you get feedback or responses, replies, whatever, from, you know, one or two or three of us.
CHERYL: We do have a lot of resources that we’ve collected over the years, too. So, if you’re curious about, you know, stuff that other people are talking about, other ways people are writing about it, I mean, we got all, we love to share this stuff, and we love to be in these conversations.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. Like Thomas offered earlier to Scott Nixon. I mean, that’s what we’re about.
THOMAS: All right. Thanks, everybody.
NEFERTITI: Thanks, everybody. Thanks for being here live. Thanks for tuning into the replay. We will be announcing on our various socials when the next chat will be, what it will be on, what platform it’ll be on. And tell a friend, all right? Tell someone you care about. Sharing is caring.

THOMAS: Cool. Well, that concludes this week’s conversation. Why don’t y’all keep the conversation going on social media.
CHERYL: Use #ADFUBU, for us by us, #DescribeEverything, and #AudioDescription.
NEFERTITI: And hey, you know we’re out here, right? Mmhmm! Gathered and galvanized y’all. If you haven’t joined us yet, what are you waiting for?! You can find us in the LinkedIn Audio Description group and the AD Twitter community. We know that your participation will only make these spaces better.
Music fades out!

Hide the transcript

TR:

Greetings Reid My Mind Radio family.

It’s me, Thomas, this week bringing you another bonus episode as promised.

In case you’re new here, this episode isn’t representative of the way I drop interviews. This is pretty raw, where I usually organize, chop out selected sections I think best support the narrative,
add some thoughts to move it all along and then add some sound design and music for a bit of flavor!

In an earlier episode titled, Flipping the Script on Audio Description: What We See, I used segments from multiple interviews with three individuals; Carmen Papalia, Collin van Uchelen and Andrew Slater.
I thought each of those interviews alone were too valuable to let sit on the cutting room floor or whatever the digital version of that is today.

If you haven’t checked out that episode, please give it a listen. I think you’ll dig it!

For now, enjoy this conversation.

— Reid My Mind Radio Theme Music

Collin:
My name is Collin van Uchelen. I am a community psychologist and Pyro technician in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I am white with gray green eyes and light brown hair. He him his

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Tell me a little bit about what you were doing before blindness.

Collin:
My sight loss has been incremental. And while I found out that I was 20, I was in university at the time and I went through university and I entered a program in clinical community psychology, a doctoral program, loved swimming, the outdoors, fireworks, my sight loss was incremental. As I lost eyesight, the kinds of activities that I would do would change gradually over time as well.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
But you were in pursuit of your doctorate and it sounds like you achieve that?

Collin:
That’s right. Yeah, I was in at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, and it was in a clinical and community psychology training program. And so I was there for quite some time and then came out, returned to British Columbia, I was born here, to pursue my clinical psychology internship at the University Hospital out here in Vancouver, have been here ever since.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
So I want to talk about the visual hallucinations, or I believe you call them scintillating photo Sia. Did I remember that correctly.

Collin:
Yeah, that’s right scintillating Photopsia . (Pronounced Fo-tope-sia) what I was told, it’s an interesting phenomena, it started to occur as my sight loss was decreasing. What it essentially is, is that I see visual phenomena, day and night, and whether my eyes are open or closed. And so they’re somewhat like, hallucinations, I guess. But I really wouldn’t call it a hallucination in that strict sense of the meaning. Let me describe what I see. It is a continual flickering and flashing of light across my whole visual field, it reminds me a little bit of, for those who are sighted, what it looks like when the sun is low on the horizon. And it’s setting over a big lake or the ocean or a body of water with all kinds of little waves. And so you just get this sea of little flashes and flickers of light, it’s a little bit like that not quite as bright as it is with the sunlight. But that’s what I see 24/7 Now in my visual fields, and then on top of that, I have some moving kind of images and shapes that occur. And that vary a little bit from time to time. One of them is a little bit like a slowly rotating propeller blade like a propeller from a ship, or like the old sweep of radar that goes around in a circle and leaves a little trail wave of light that ripples out behind it. And these things rotate about one rotation per second, and I’ll see it rotate 567 times, and then it almost comes flying off its axis as if the propeller has just become dislodged, and then it disappears off in the distance, most of time they’re rotating clockwise. And, and I, I can’t do anything, really to create them or to make them stop. Another effect I have is also something that moves across my visual field. And I describe it a little bit like a gummy worm. It’s a band of light that’s somewhat curved. It’s usually kind of a bright purple, kind of a whitish purple, and it’s very, very bright. And so I have these band, it’s almost like in a couple of arches that that move across my visual field, sometimes left to right, sometimes bottom to top or top to bottom, and it just kind of sweeps across my, my visual field.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Do you think that’s similar to the floaters? I know folks describe floaters. I had that long time ago. floaters.

Collin:
Yes. Yeah, very, very much. Because as I try to focus on one of these things, and and like try to track it, then it keeps moving, you know, outside of my visual field, just just at the edge of what I would be able to see. And it’s interesting because I really see almost nothing. Now, I can tell you know, whether there’s light or dark, a little bit of light perception, but most of my functional eye sight has deteriorated. I think in terms of this, this phenomena one of the most interesting things that I see often occurs early in the morning if I wake up from a dream or wake up in the middle of the night. It’s almost as if I’m looking at how it looks when if you look at a dry bottom of a lake bed or a stream bed where the water has receded in the sun has dried everything out. And then you have these little cracks that separate these little clumps of land, you know, they’re like little islands. And what I see is these kinds of little islands, but they’re all illuminated, and they’re kind of a bright greenish color. And then around them it is just black. And these little greenish islands have all these little scintillating, or they’re flickering, sometimes with these kind of purple sparkles in them. And these islands seem to grow in size, or divide in size and get smaller, and then sometimes clustered together. And sometimes these big clusters will form in kind of a purply. Color in it’s beautiful to look at. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of film, I used to see when I would see lava as a kid on TV, and I would see a lava flow that had sort of a crust of rock on the surface or, you know, hardened lava on the surface. And you would see in the cracks, you know, the bright orange glow below and just had that same kind of movement and, and breaking and coming together and splitting apart.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Wow, that’s cool. Like yours sound like it has a little bit more texture than mine. And what I noticed is the movement, I don’t have movement, like the floating that does not occur for me. So that’s really that’s really interesting.

Collin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

TR in Conversation with Collin:
yeah. What do you feel about this phenomenon? Do you think there’s anything to it? Or is it just random? Do you make any connections ever?

Collin:
You know, I think there is a lot to it. But that’s just because I have a from my training in psychology and understand a bit about, you know, how vision works in the brain. And our sensory information is kind of combined in through the photoreceptors of our retina. But I think for me, and in terms of other kinds of meaning that it has, I don’t mind it, in some ways. I describe it a little bit like ringing in the years, you know, if you’ve been to something that’s been quite loud, or you know, for folks who have some hearing loss or whatever, like that, it’s constantly going, it’s difficult to escape from, but it’s not unpleasant. For me, it’s just part of the background of my day to day life. And I find it somewhat interesting, insofar as it also reminds me a little bit of fireworks. As a pyro technician, and training fireworks is an art form that I’ve always loved long before I knew I was losing my eyesight, and I still like it, the flickering of it, the brightness of it, the high contrast of it. And that is an effect that you wouldn’t otherwise see every day. I think in terms of meaning, it’s kind of about that. And sometimes it just makes me smile. If it’s, you know, particularly vivid, like sometimes I’m just like, Wow, it’s amazing that I’m able to see this in the context of not being able to see much of what’s around me anymore due to my sight loss. And then sometimes if if I sneeze, it’s almost like they’re activated, or the intensity or speed or brightness is, is increased. And so I’ll get these earlier, I described these these, like worms that will move, you know, across my visual field, like moving arches, and they will sometimes, you know, repeat one after the other 1 2 3 4. And they’re all rising up in succession, and they’re quite bright. I think there might be something just a reflection of the physical stimulation that’s going on at that moment.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
I didn’t even think about the fact that you were a psychologist, because when I was thinking about these visions, I start to sometimes look at at the shapes and stuff. What is that called the Rorschach, the Rorschach test with the ink blocks,

Collin:
and the Rorschach inkblot.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Yeah. And I started to like, try to figure out okay, what am I, what am I seeing in this shape? And I’m not gonna get into what I see.

Collin:
That’s called a projective test, because you’re projecting into the image you’re looking at, you know, whether their interpretation, and it’s supposedly reveals a lot about your inner work.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Yeah, that’s why I’m not gonna say what I see.

Collin:
Fair enough.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
But it sounds like scientifically that there’s probably no because like you said his project. I mean, you could project on anything. .

Collin:
Sure. Yeah. I don’t think so. It has, you know, particular specific meaning. And so in that regard, I think it is somewhat random kind of activation of, you know, our nervous system to fill in, fill in the space that’s left behind with the degeneration of the photoreceptor cells,

TR in Conversation with Collin:
but it’s kind of fun. I sometimes wonder, is it related to something that I’m feeling is it related to you know, anything about my life? Is this something that I’m not consciously thinking about? I guess scientifically, that’s probably not the case. But, you know, I kind of still like to hold on to it like and wonder.

Collin:
Sounds like a whole line of psychological research that we could get into. Very interesting.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Has your feeling changed about these. The way you feel today? Was that the same way you felt in the beginning?

Collin:
No, I think at the beginning, it was a bit more of an annoyance. It was almost like a see through a screen that was between me and the outer world that I was still able to see at that point, you know, so I could see mountains and trees and faces of people. And then I would have this sort of display in the foreground, over the top of it have this constant shimmering and flicking and whatnot. So it was a little bit more annoying at that point, because it couldn’t shut off. But now as the rest of my visual field, my capacity to see what’s out and around me has diminished. This has become more of okay, well, this is what I have available for me to see now. It’s really not an annoyance. It’s just feel so familiar. It’s always there. There’s really never a moment when it when it stops.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
If you woke up and they were gone. Would you miss them?

Collin:
I would think oh, I’m in trouble. (Laughing) Right? Am I alive? Yeah, like that might not be a good sign. Would I miss them? I don’t know. That’s an interesting question. Because it would be I imagined, like quite dark. Or maybe not. Maybe everything would appear kind of white or light gray or who knows.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
So you mentioned you are a pyrotechnic in training. So let’s talk a little bit of fireworks. What’s your earliest memory of enjoying fireworks?

Collin:
It’s kind of neat. It’s one of my earlier visual memories. I was about four. And I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, and they had an aerial fireworks display. This was the first time that I remember ever having seen anything like that, where there were all these colored points of light that were gorgeous, red, and green, and silver and in gold. That’s my first experience. And I was hooked. From that moment on Yeah, I didn’t have much occasion to see them frequently based on where I live. But I do remember, you know, having the experience at Disney Land. And then when I came to back to Vancouver here for my internship work. It just so happened that every summer in Vancouver, there was an event where three nights in the end of July and beginning of August, they would have a 20 to 25 minute Pyro techniques display where the fireworks were all synchronized to music. And they are launched from a couple of barges that are anchored out in the English Bay Harbor here in Vancouver, which is a gorgeous location and it’s rimmed with beaches all along and you would get two to 300,000 people come out and sit on the beach, you know, in the evening, watch the sunset and take in the fireworks display. In the center of it, they would even have a big PA system where the music was broadcast out on the beach. And then people who were farther away could tune in using their radios. And this was all simulcast then, and so they could see how the music was represented in the form of light during these displays, and it was just fantastic. And I remember the first one I saw, that’s when I returned here in 92. And I was I was, I was blown away. I’d never seen anything so impactful and so huge and so engaging as that because it’s not just the music. It’s not just the light of fireworks, but it’s also that the sound of the firework and the echo of that sound and how it kind of bounces around you. And the sort of immersive quality of the whole experience was was tremendous.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Have you ever experienced fireworks on television where you don’t hear the actual explosions? You just see the fireworks and the accompanying music. Does that have the same effect on you? Oh, no,

Collin:
no, no, not so much. You know? And it reminds me actually of the little blurb that they had at the end of the you know, the Disney show way way back. Oh, yeah. They’re really young kid, you know, like, yeah, the fireworks going off around the council. It’s pretty to look at that the immersive nature of that multi sensory engagement is something that I really experienced when I’m close, as close as possible both to the firework display and to the music system. Here in Vancouver when these events occur, you know, there’s a one kind of it’s sort of like the quote front and center place, you know, at English Bay where English Bay Beach where You would go down and the crowd is very, very full there. So when the beach is full, you were sitting knee to knee on the beach 10s of 1000s of people all in close proximity, you know, would be very difficult even to walk around on the beach, you know, right prior to the display, because it is so full. People are all there for the same purpose, you know, to kind of experience this particular event. That’s pretty incredible.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Yeah, so you can smell the gunpowder at that point.

Collin:
Sometimes you can, you can smell the smoke. Yeah, it depends on the direction of the wind, you know, and, but it’s really, it’s, it’s kind of that that Sonic engagement. And, and I tell you, there’s another part of this that that I think is really interesting, because it’s it’s a feeling sensation to. And that’s, it’s about what I call resonance. And I think it’s these are these moments when the artistry of what I’m beholding or witnessing touches me in a way that it just gives me goosebumps. If I can tell you just a bit of a story about how this occurred to me once here that just really got me to pay attention. I was at English Bay I was with a close friend and fireworks describer, Brad and you know, with 200,000 people on the beach all around you. You know, there’s a lot of chatter and conversation that goes on during these firework shows. But there was a moment when the music was kind of quiet. And the fireworks are kind of quiet to kind of muffled, sizzling sound and muffled kind of the the sound of the shell breaks as they were breaking in the air. And the crowd grew entirely silent. I had this feeling like that something amazing was going on. And nobody was saying a word. And so I leaned over to my friend Brad and I whisper and I said, Brad , like what’s happening? And he leaned back into me, and he said, it’s burning tears. It’s thousands of burning tears just slowly dripping down from the sky. Ma Yeah. Do you feel that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that that feeling I have, and I have it now just saying the story again, of that, that kind of tingles that went cascading through, through my spine, you know, and over the surface of my body. It’s that kind of experience that I love. That’s the kind of experience that I have often in, in the moments of tremendous beauty in like in the presence of art, whether it be music, or a fireworks effects, such as this one, which was these kind of long, orange, reddish tendrils of light that were just dripping down, all through the sky. I call that resonance because I think there’s something out there that is touching something inside of me. And I feel this kind of moment of connection and communion with it. And I think these experiences are heightened when we’re in the presence of other people who are witnessing the same or experiencing the same kind of moment together with us. And I think there’s this kind of transpersonal energy field that’s created by it. For me, I love it. So I will seek out experiences where this is likely to occur, going to performance, so one of my favorite musical, you know, groups or go into the fireworks or whatever, you know, communal shared, singing, you know, choir, that kind of thing. It’s about feeling a, it’s a feeling we, that gets activated in us. And so it’s, it’s not just the what’s happening out there. It’s about sort of our, my own sort of connection to it that I love in so I think that’s one of the big drivers. For me, one of the reasons that I love this art form is I often get that feeling.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Wow. You know, it’s funny, because I think that answers this next question in a way, what led you to believe that you can enjoy fireworks without sight? And so the fact that you can feel it? And you still get that feeling? Sounds like it but yeah, what led you initially, to think that

Collin:
I was involved with an organization here in Vancouver called Vocal Eye Descriptive Arts, and they describe artistic and cultural events usually like performance art, to make it more accessible to people from the blind and low vision community. Primary for them was describing theatrical performances, which would be great because folks with sight loss would be in the audience and have a little headset on and would hear audio description of the action that was occurring on stage that was important, but that they might not be able to see with a describer, you know, near event as the action unfolded. So I approached the executive director, Steph Kirkland, and I said, Hey, Stef, would you be willing to come down and describe the fireworks and she was up to the challenge and she’s, you know, we of course, talked about how this was an unusual thing, but she did a bit of study about it. And by this time in my life, I had also assembled a bit of a vocabulary list and a glossary of terms. And so I would coach describers, who were going to describe for me what the different shapes and names were of specific effect types. There’s one that’s called the chrysanthemum. And that is a spherical effect where you see little trails of light behind the stars, as they move out from the center point, a little bit like a dandelion that’s gone to seed, if you’ve ever seen one of those, there are other effects that are more like a shooting star, you know, with a long trail of sparkling light. And these are called comets, and some are called willows, because they look a little bit like a weeping willow tree, or a palm tree. And so each of these characteristic effects has a unique label and or term that kind of refers to the form or shape that the firework takes in the sky, you know, albeit quite briefly. So coming back to Stef, so she came down to the beach to work with me, and she was describing the effects. And she was using the vocabulary that, you know, we both understood and describing the color and the changes of color, and these things are all very dynamic, right and changing quite quickly over the course of a display. I often use a metaphor, it’s like describing a flower bouquet, where the flowers are constantly changing size and form and shape and color and arrangement. It’s impossibly difficult to do in words, but just even focusing on one flower, or one particular kind of arrangement is is worth it if you’re losing your eyesight. And I think for me, I was yearning to stay connected with this art form that I so appreciated, but was losing touch with just because of the ongoing demise of my eyesight. And so there was this one moment on that that evening that Steph was describing kind of a little cluster or clump of stars that seemed to be slowly drifting down. And I was trying to kind of comprehend well, okay, how quickly is that moving in the sky, and I asked her to trace it out on my skin using her fingers. And so she traced it out on my forearm, the speed of this descent to this cluster of stars. And just her doing that gave me goosebumps at that moment, because I thought, This is how to do it. Because with that tactile gesture, she could convey the movement and the speed and somewhat of the character of the light in ways that words were unable to capture. And we spoke about that. And she too, had a comprehension of that. It’s just through that physical gesture of the movement that there was some potential to explore. And so over the course of the next year, she explored that, you know, in collaboration with me, and that was the genesis of the description technique that subsequently became known as finger works for fireworks. And they would use their fingertips to trace out the trajectory of the fireworks patterns on our back, and then use words to describe the characteristic colors changes and colors, or particularly interesting patterns and shapes, the words would kind of fill in the space between the gestures, between the two of them, hearing the words, feeling the tactile description on my back, and then hearing the effects of the fireworks themselves in the sky. Coupled with the music, the soundtrack for it, it was a really nice way it kind of started to reconnect me with the art form, in ways that were helping to compensate for my sight loss. They didn’t replace vision. Yeah, I would prefer to see it. But it was a way to stay connected. And so that’s become a foundation for my continued exploration in what I call cross sensory translation. It’s like how can we translate something from the visual modality into non visual modality so that we kind of stay connected with it and maybe brings a new perspective on it and new way of engaging with it as someone who’s such as myself, who is now blind,

TR in Conversation with Collin:
with the finger works, would a describer reflect intensity with the weight of their fingers on your hand? Or are you getting intensity from the sound of the explosions,

Collin:
the sound of the explosion doesn’t necessarily map on to the intensity of how bright the effect is, you know, and unless it’s like what’s called a salute, which is just like a big bang, you know, like those are the and those often occur at the finale of the show. But with the intensity of the touch of your fingers. Yes, you can convey that the brilliance, the brightness of it.

I once had a pianist, a classic, coldly trained professional pianist, do this kind of description with me. She was married to one of the pirate technicians who was helped setting up the display at this mall. moment, I didn’t have a describer with me and I said, Hey, Jen, would you be willing to do this? And she said, Well, how and so what let your fingers be the conduit of the energy of the light. And she was great at it. Even without using words, she was able to convey, convey so much of the character and the color and the emotion of that display, based on her touch and the elegance with which he was able to use her fingers in their movement, and that the delicacy of the touch at moments that were really kind of delicate in terms of the the effects, you can convey so much in that way. Yeah, that’s a good question.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
The way you sort of approach this, you tell me, it doesn’t sound like you were ever seeking a replacement. It sounds like you were clear that you were not going to replace that. But there was something that you were looking for to gain from the fireworks.

Collin:
It was reaching for anything to to enable me to stay connected with the art form. And so that that morphed over time, you know, so it just started with friends who are giving sort of the verbal description, you know, and at that time, I was still able to see the colors, but couldn’t really distinguish some of the shapes of the dimmer a fact teaching the vocabulary, and then kind of that description got more and more involved than bringing, you know, Vocal Eye on, the tactile gestures. And then, when Brett had that phrase, burning, tears dripping down, that just really opened up the window to kind of also comprehend what is possible with evocative description, you know, that’s almost like poetic in that way, that can still sort of activate my own sense of my own resonance with the art, it was always sort of reaching for and then doing work to kind of CO create the access tools that were necessary for me to continue my engagement with this artform and I’m continuing to do it to this day.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
How important would you say that is this whole thing was in terms of your adjustment to blindness?

Collin:
Well, it’s, I, I think what it reveals, to me most clearly, is the value in having some agency about developing an approach to do stuff that I want to do that might not be already existing out there in the world. As far as I know, no one was into describing fireworks for the benefit of people who are blind at that moment. And rather than me like wishing and hoping that someone would invent this kind of thing, to say, Hey, this is what I’m imagining, this is what I would like to do, Hey, would you trace that out on on the surface of my skin, and it’s through those kind of moments that are really quite generative. Little did I know, where it would lead that one experience where that could possibly go, and that it would have interest for other people too, in terms of my own adjustment to blindness, I think this is one of the ways that works for me. and blindness is terribly inconvenient. And I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, it slows me down it, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t do and can’t do and I don’t want to spend the time to do. But this is one of the things where you know, I still have that, that desire that I’m going to work at this, you know, and I’m going to do whatever I can to stay connected with this art form.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
I’m hanging on to that word agency. (Overly exaggerated and sarcastic) )What in the world Collin makes you think you can move from being a consumer of fireworks, you know, just enjoying them into actually creating them? What gives you the nerve to do that?

Collin:
(Laughing) That was actually a really nice question. And in what I’m doing is really quite unreasonable. I am a Pyro technician, I am learning about not just like how fireworks look and how they function, but actually how they’re constructed, what the components are, how they are assembled, all that the technical details of the art form, and I’m not doing it because I’m blind or like, Hey, I’m blind, like, you know, like, I’m gonna do something crazy. I’m doing it because it’s just, it’s a natural reflection of my curiosity, in interest in this particular field, and I just keep learning more and it was really at the beginning of the Torah COVID lockdowns that a chunk of time freed up in my life that it was no longer you know, getting dressed and going to the office and with transit and this that and the other thing, you know, it’s like, oh, my gosh, I have a little bit of time. And there was an encounter with a an artist at one of these events at English Bay when fireworks were being described with this technique and Carmen Papalia. He said, calling you you should really do Something with your interest in Fireworks is because he said what you’re doing here is amazing. And he said, it really sort of changes the discourse about accessibility as kind of a quote service or a one size fits all type of thing into a more relational realm where this is kind of negotiated between someone who is not using their eyes to perceive the world, you know, and someone who is able to be a guide or interpret the visual world with us and where we have some agency about how that works. And so I, I do that with my own describers. Now to like, if I’m with fireworks, and they’re giving me too much words, that’s okay, you know, less less words, or slow down on what you’re doing in terms of your tactile gestures, simplified, but just show me one thing, clearly, I want to be a little bit in the driver’s seat about how that description works. And I think it’s that same kind of desire, that is informing my own training within the pyrotechnics, as an art form. So I’m learning and I’m seeking out to work with people who are experienced and who understand way more. And the more I learned, the more I realize how little I actually know about the complexity of this. It’s a combination of physics and mathematics and chemistry. And then there’s a little bit of artistic creativity and in the fall tend, in all this, you know, to be combined in the tablet synchronized to music, and be Arial and all the random factors that affect it, such as the wind and humidity, and, you know, whatever else might be on the go the variability from one shell to the next. It’s just incredible that any of this works, let alone to have it work in such a way that gives the viewer goosebumps is just astounding, and I want to learn how to do that. And I want to learn to be part of that. And I want to co create that. And of course, I can’t do what I can’t do. And I’m not trying to do what’s impossible. But I’m trying to do what’s within my realm of possibility where I do have some agency on designing something. And so that’s my current ambition is to design a pyro musical display, from my standpoint, as someone who has sight loss is ridiculous, but but I’m loving it.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
This might sound like a weird question, but I’ll relate it, who gave you or who can give you permission to do this?

Collin:
Yeah, who gave me permission to do this? I tell you how this came about. First of all, no one gave me permission, per se, I do do the proper certification to understand safety and legal considerations. And that was a chunk of work to make that happen. But in terms of the kind of permission to pursue this as an area of interest. It was a conversation I had with a pyro technician here in British Columbia, Bill Reynolds, it was at this moment that, you know, I spoke with Carmen, he said you want to do something with your interest in pyrotechnics. And I was, you know, looking for somebody who had a bit of a proper Vocabulary List of fireworks effects that went along with, you know, images of what those look like that I could use for training purposes. And I managed to be referred to Bill and I spoke with them. And we had this conversation and I said this is what I’m looking for, you know, for what I’m doing with description of fireworks, you know, to make them more accessible as viewers to people who are blind. And then at the end of the conversation like, oh, by the way, I just thought I should mention, you know that I have this like crazy ambition that one day, I want to design a firework display of my own to a pyro musical to my favorite song. He heard that and I felt like oh, god, he’s gonna hang up on me or laugh or whatever. And he said, Well, do you want to fail at that? And I thought, Well, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t know, I actually kind of think it’d be really cool to do. And he said, Well, Collin, then you have to do it. Because if you don’t do it, you will most certainly fail. And you told me you don’t want to fail. So there’s one option, and that’s to do it. And he said, and I suggest you do it now. And it was one of those moments that just gave me goosebumps, you know, and it just my heart started to panic. And I started to kind of get sweaty and I thought like, and I just knew like, he’s right. You know, like, he’s right. If I’m going to do anything with this crazy dream, which have been floating around my head for years, you know, like, oh, one day wouldn’t it be cool if ya da da da da, in the meantime I’m going blind and it’s this kind of lovely fantasy, kind of a bucket list type of thing but never really, really seriously thought, yeah, I can actually didn’t really believe in myself that I could do this. Yeah. And I think it was him that kind of kick started me into seeing. Okay, well, what would it take to make this happen? And so I wrote some grant proposals with the assistance from people who knew way more about the arts field. And as Carmen told me, he said Collin you’re an artist. And your biggest problem is that you don’t know that, you know, and I kept thinking, Yeah, I thought I was a psychologist. And he said, You need to just embrace your artistic side. And he said, and I think you can go somewhere with this. And so I wrote some grant proposals, and lo and behold, they were funded. And each step of the way that I talk, doing the next kind of unreasonably ambitious thing, the door would open up for me, and step by step, person by person, contact by contact, communication, but communication, I’ve just been led forward, going deeper and deeper into the heart of the very thing that I want to have come together in my life. I’m in the midst of it now. And it’s, it’s just amazing. And it still feels completely unreasonable to be doing what I’m doing. I’m not doing anything unsafe, but it’s just like having that agency about, okay, what can I imagine in terms of translating music into light? And then the challenges? How can I translate that to my sighted coworkers, who will be working with me who are going to help me navigate what specific firework effect would create that kind of a pattern of stars or that kind of feeling or that color of sparkle without, you know, delay and or the length of time it stays visible in the sky? And that’s where I’m relying on on people who have that kind of wisdom of experience and knowledge to work with.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
You mentioned you had to get some sort of certification in terms of safety. Outside of that, is there any other certification any other governing body that’s getting in your way of trying to do what you’re doing?

Collin:
No, no, the reason I did it, it for my own knowledge and credibility.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Right now in audio description. There are people out here who really frown upon, and who doubt the abilities of blind people to participate in audio description, in many ways. But the most obvious and the most thing that gets a lot of conversation is about blind folks who want to write audio discretion. And they question their abilities. And they question the fact that they have accommodations. And part of those accommodations are specifically you need someone to give you some of that initial description. And then they form sentences instruction all that time. But the main point around that is that there’s a big restriction on right now it’s we’re talking about audio description, but this same thing happened for blind folks who, who teach O & M (Orientation & Mobility) instruction, people doubting our abilities.
Collin:
That’s right.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
And that’s what it comes down to. Any thoughts on that?

Collin:
Many, many, because I do think that that doubt, in our own ability and our own agency, to make choices about how we want to engage with the world around us what we want to teach what we want to do how we want to have access to information or experiences in our life. Yeah, I think we’re often looked to as sort of an independent position or role, I still experience it today. If I go somewhere, and I’m with a sighted person, the handler, the ticket taker, the gate agent, whatever, whoever they talk with, they talk with a sighted person, even if it’s about me and my own access needs, I think people just default to talking with an able bodied person, because we’re they’re accustomed to us needing to be managed and handled and taken care of in some way to keep us safe or out of trouble or whatever it might be that they think. I think that’s a large part of the context. And I think some people just aren’t even aware of how much they do that on a day to day basis. And I think they may even believe that they’re being respectful, you know, by talking to the person with eyesight about our needs, you know, so it was not to, quote offend us, or whatever it might be that they’re imagining. For me. I think with the work I’ve done both with the initial description work, and with a subsequent development of my own interest in the pyrotechnical arts, it really was about charging forward and doing something that I thought worked for me fundamentally, and it has the added benefit of networking for some of my peers as well. Even with the description work that I do with Vocal Eye Descriptive Arts here in Vancouver and the Finger Works for Fireworks technique, when there was interest in it from The media, they would always go immediately to Vocal Eye about sort of as the source as the genesis for this word. And I was the one who said, Hey, how about describing fireworks? Hey, how about tracing this out on my arm. And so how quickly we forget about that kind of narrative in the surface of other people helping the blind to see and not to discount the huge benefit and import and and gift that that is that there are people who will describe for me and with my peers and for my peers and, and you know, bend over backwards to open up experiences and possibilities to us that we would otherwise miss. I think it’s lovely. I do. And I think that there are ways that we, ourselves also can have agency in navigating what that can look like. For me. I just started to develop what I was doing. And with fireworks, I started to experiment with how can these things be represented in tactile three dimensional models? And I found volunteer to work with and say, Okay, I have a blocked Styrofoam here, we have a bunch of pipe cleaners and these little sticks and plants and whatever to represent shapes are different fireworks, and what can we do to represent the shape of effects so that they work for me, and that might work for other people in terms of telling people how to recognize one firework from another? I think it comes down to agency, you know? Yeah. And that sometimes we just have to do it and, and people will like, Hey, wait, wait, you can’t go there. Watch me go. Here I go.

TR in Conversation with Collin:
Yeah, we go. How can folks watch you go? How can we stay in touch and stay in tune with what you’re doing and learn more and follow along and all of that,

Collin:
while I do a tremendous amount on my own, one of the things I haven’t really well developed, is any kind of a presence on social media or the like, my hope is one day that will come together.

The display I’m working on will be called awaken in light. Awaken is the name of the piece of music. It’s by the progressive rock group, “Yes”, written in 1977 in light comes about because of their representation of this music in the form of light. It’s not going to be your ordinary, short, top 40 piece of music. It’s a long song. It’s complex, has many different movements and many emotions to it. I would say when this is taken shape, it’ll be awakened in light as what you’ll need to look for.

I do have a website which is called Burning tears dot C A

This is a website where we talk about the power of words to describe dynamic art, such as fireworks in my exploration of it and a project that I’ve been working on over the past year and a half

TR:

Thanks for listening!

Remember, there’s lots of episodes in the archive. Personally, I think anyone new to disability, especially blindness or low vision, will really appreciate you letting them know about this podcast. So if you’re a real friend or family, you need to stop everything and let them know how they can follow the show.

Reid My Mind Radio is available wherever you get podcasts.
Transcripts and more are at ReidMyMind.com.
Just be sure you let them know;
that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample: “D… and that’s me in the place to be!”

Like my last name.

— Reid My Mind Radio Outro

Peace

Hide the transcript

Crowd applause
“We’re about to let our hair down. Woo!”

TR:

The episodes I least enjoy producing, are those in response to an injustice, unfairness or something I find plain wrong.

I’m not the type of person who looks for drama.
Reid My Mind Radio family knows I put time into explaining my perspective and I treat people fairly.

Ever since fourth grade, I knew, I have to be cautious about how I respond. My resting face or my angry face, was perceived to be “looking for a problem”. Especially to my white teachers.

Physically responding to being pushed or punched would inevitably classify me as the aggressor.

The challenge is not only to effectively make a case for my position, but also be respectful.

Honestly, saying that bothers me.

Respectful?

The truth is it’s not so much about my behavior. More than often, it’s about how I’m perceived – the aggressor.
There are those who will try and dismiss what I’m saying as the ramblings of an angry Black Blind man.

But that ain’t new!

— A montage of Black athletes speaking out against injustice and the resulting response
Muhammad Ali;: It has been said that I have two alternatives, either go to jail or go to the army, but I will like to say there is another alternative. And that alternative is justice!

News Reporter: Mr. Muhammad Ali has just refused to be inducted into the United States Armed Forces.

Narrator: The reaction was swift and severe. within hours, the Chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission denounced his conduct as detrimental to the interests of boxing, stripping him of his license to fight in New York. Almost every other boxing commission in the United States followed suit.

News Reporter: Overnight San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem again. (Over singing of the anthem)
This time he took a knee right behind hundreds of service members being honored on military appreciation night. As the crowd and players stand you can see Kaepernick kneeling on the sideline. Teammate Eric Reid joining him.

The crowd booing every time he took a snap.

Fox Commentator: I’m gonna create a new banner, this is a dumb jock alert. (Ding, ding ding!) NBA superstar Lebron James is talking politics again…

Reporter: You spoke out on the Sterling issue. And you were also outspoken on Travon Martin.
Lebron James: Yes!

Fox Commentator: Keep the political commentary to yourself or as someone once said; “Shut up and dribble!”

TR:
It’s the same old story , when Black people call out any form of injustice.
Shut up and dribble. Stay in your place. Just keep your head down and do your work.

Speaking out, well that just leads to some form of punishment or being made an example to discourage anyone else from doing the same.
So they’re stripped of their ability to earn a living. They’re branded as ignorant and made to appear to be a joke.

Do everything, but deal with inequality.

Of course, once society acknowledges the inequity then they praise that outspoken person for their courage
and act as though popular culture always supported their efforts.

Now, I’m in no way comparing myself to these individuals or anyone else for that matter. I’m simply giving you some context for why
these are my least favorite types of episodes to produce.

For Black people especially, truly speaking out can have real repercussions. Some might say backlash.

Woof! What’s the origin of that word?

Yet, sitting by and saying nothing, well that isn’t really an option!

My mother made it clear, none of her children were going to be bullied.
Just watching her move through life, as her child, I learned as she would say, you don’t hold your tongue.
She believed, if you were about what was right and fair, then there’s no need for being shy about what you have to say. That was until she and I disagreed about something, but that’s another story!

I’m Marcy’s son, Thomas Reid. this is Reid My Mind Radio!
— “Here we go again! ” Chuck D, Public Enemy “Bring the Noise”

— Reid My Mind Radio Theme Music
— Turn it up!”

— Broken record effect

You ever feel like a broken record?

— Dream harp sound
— audio from the 2022 episode titled Black Art White Voices
”
Music begins, a pulsating ominous synth that opens up to a dramatic mid-tempo beat.

TR:

What’s up Reid My Mind Radio?

We’re in between seasons but I wanted to share some thoughts with the family.

Truth is, I wish I didn’t feel obligated to share these thoughts on this particular subject.
I’m hoping one day it won’t be necessary.

Several years ago now, I produced this episode that has really sort of attached itself to me.
It’s the Black Panther episode.
The episode I almost threw away. I didn’t think anyone would care.
I published it anyway.

People cared!

I think.

I’m just ready to move past it.
Meaning, I would love to see those who say they understand and support the need for Audio description to be more culturally aware and competent, put it into practice.

but, it’s like…
Audio sample: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” From The Godfather.
”

TR:

That was the opening of the 2022 episode titled Black Art White Voices.
I feel like the title says it all, but apparently not enough.

This issue didn’t start in 2022, it’s way before Black Panther in 2018.
In fact, it begins before audio description.

— Collage of audio clips —
— “European institutions like the British Museum and the Love are home to some of the world’s finest art. But some of the treasures on display were stolen during colonial times. Experts believe up to 90 % of African cultural artifacts were taken from the continent.”

— “Cultural theft has been, especially when it comes to Black culture, as American as apple pie.”
— “From the time we were brought over here on slave ships and our very lives were stolen from us.”
— “From white artists that put Black face on” … “Elvis Presley” …
— “Don’t do my thing and not give me my share. So that’s where it becomes theft.”
— Chuck Berry’s song followed by a replica from the Beach Boys.

TR:

The “white washing” of Black art and history is alive and just a part of this country’s fabric.

— “This fight against teaching America’s racist past has now been integrated into the broader Republican cancel culture wokeness moral panic being stoked with Joe Biden in office and since he’s a less appealing target than other recent Democratic presidents for oh gosh who knows what reasons, Mitch McConnell and his party decided the biggest threat to America is white people finding out America’s institutions are racist.”

TR:

Black art and culture isn’t made to be filtered through whiteness.

Non-Blind consumers are free to experience the art in the way it was intended. And so should Blind people.

TR:
Well exactly who are Blind people?

— From Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED Talk
“Many years ago I began to use the term intersectionality… intersections of race, and gender of heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism , all of these social dynamics come together and create challenges that are sometimes quite unique.”

TR:
That’s Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw , the person who first articulated and coined the term intersectionality.
Chances are, most of you are aware of intersectionality. It’s a pretty simple concept that’s often ignored.
Our lives consist of multiple identities and issues.
Recognizing these identities isn’t about ranking one over the other, it’s about acknowledging that we’re impacted differently and need to take this into consideration.

Blind people consist of every identity. (Hopefully that’s not news to you.

Audio description should center Blind people. (Again, I feel like the majority of you agree with this!)

All Blind people, not just those who are white and cisgendered. (Now this may be new for some.)

But, I’m going to move forward working under the assumption that we all agree that:
Blind people intersect with multiple identities. We are;
Black, indigenous, people of color, and white
We’re straight, gay, non-binary, trans
we’re from every socio economic background

I’ll also assume we can agree that we all have a right to experience content as it was intended by its creators.

With that said. let’s get into it.

— audio from “Hair Tales” show intro with Oprah

Tracey Ellis Ross: We created a space for us to gather our stories…

Unknown voice over:
“I never know what my hair will do”
Tracey Ellis Ross: Honoring our identity culture beauty and humanity.

Series of unknown voice overs:
“Braided locs, corn rows, twist out, hot comb, relaxed, any style you want; big, versatile, lush, beautiful, resilient hair. What version of myself do I want to be. You do not need hair to wear a crown. Whoop!
My hair is like laced…. laughs.

Tracey Ellis Ross: I’m Tracey Ellis Ross join me as we celebrate the truth of who we are through the wonderous world of our hair. So my hope is that these conversations we have create more space for belonging, self-actualization and I think there’s so much about our hair that’s community that sort of centers through our hair. And it can feel like it’s just a conversation about hair, but it’s not. Especially not for Black women.

Oprah: It never is.

Tracey Ellis Ross: No!

TR:

If you’ve been flipping the script on audio description with me over the past few years, you should be quite familiar with this idea.
I’m talking about conversations being about more than what they appear to be on the surface.

Black women and their hair is definitely about beauty, but it’s also political,

— Music Begins: “a dark, driving hip hop beat

it’s a reason for multiple generations to gather and share history,
it’s about economics. I’m sure someone can if they haven’t already, tell the story of humanity through Black women and their hair. The Black woman is the mother of us all! (Facts, not opinion)

Hair and the stories that come with them are personal.
Casandra:
Hair is a big deal to me, which is why my locks are past my glutes and reaching the back of my thighs. I have locks. And I’ve had them since I was 16. And I am 33 years old now. So I don’t see myself in any other style other than locs for as long as I can have them on my scalp.

TR:

That’s Casandra Xavier.

Casandra:
I mostly go by the screen name Caspher (spelled out) CASPHER. I am in Boston and grew up in Boston, originally from Florida.
I am identified as deaf blind, mixed combination of vision and hearing loss. AKA deaf blind champion, an African American woman. And I enjoy a good storytelling session. Whether it be on stage or in a small group setting. Great to be here.

TR:

The decision to grow her hair in locs is very personal to Caspher.

Casandra:
When I was younger, I was going through a lot of medical procedures that involved hair cutting. And so I had to wait till I was done with that awful passage of my life of surgeries every now and then to finally say okay, this is the hairstyle that I’ve always wanted.

I Couldn’t stand any other style because that would involve constantly getting your hair pulled on. And contorted into all kinds of styles. I just didn’t like people in my hair all the time.

I’ve always wanted locks.

— Audio collage on not letting people touch your head.

TR:

I don’t know if this is a spiritual thing, a Black thing but I’ve heard this all my life with different explanations.

I hear it mainly from Black people throughout the diaspora as well as LatinEx especially those from the Caribbean really

Casandra:
it’s the whole energy thing.

Where do they come from?
Did they even wash their hands?
What are their hand hygiene like?
Because you with your hair and then touching it. Later on? You’re gonna go lay down in the bed on the pillow with that? Mm hmm.
\end

TR:
If there’s one thing we all should understand, three years after the pandemic, germs are passed through physical contact.

What may be more complicated for some to accept is the idea of transferring negative energy through touch.

Either way, the kindergarten lesson remains true;
Don’t put your f*%#ing hands on people.

Casandra:
I was actually taking my hair down from a style. And when it came out, it was extra curly. So the next day, I had to, like stand as far apart from everybody. Because once they saw those, like locks in the curls hanging down my thigh. Everybody wanted to be hands on.

They would just walk up to me first, touch the hair and then ask afterwards.

So as soon as you catch them coming closer, I’m already moving all the way away. I’m not anywhere near you.

TR in Conversation with Casandra:
Can we be specific about the they and them?

I have an assumption.

Casandra:
The White folks. okay, a lot of black people they know better, so they won’t even.

TR in Conversation with Casandra:
So they just do it. They don’t even ask, Do they ask?

Casandra:
They just touch. This is like the classic line that comes out of their lips. So this is all yours. It’s all natural.

Yes. Absolutely.

And I do have to answer with attitude, because it is my hair since I was 16.
TR:
Then?

Casandra:
They asked me if they can touch my hair. I will say no.

TR:
Hairstyles have different meaning to different people.

Caspher’s mom for example felt locs were bad. And then Caspher’s older brother went an grew his hair in locs.

Casandra:
It was almost like he went and signed up for the army without telling her.
And she’s like, Oh, so you’re one of the troublemakers now.

And then she realized really quickly now that her son has locks, it’s not all as bad as it seems.

I wanted to get locks, when she was a lot more lenient about it and was like, Okay, you can get it.
Just wait until all your medical procedures are done.

I said once I’m done with all these surgeries and when everything is healed, I want locks. And I meant it. So she let me try out twist for a year. And she’s like, do you still want it? I said absolutely. And that’s when it happened.

— Music Ends

I started growing my locs and I couldn’t be any more happy. I don’t regret My decision at all.

Tracey Ellis Ross: Every kink, curl and coil in a Black woman’s hair has a hair tale…

TR:
And now, let me ask.

Who should voice the audio description for the Hair Tales documentary?
Who should be the filter through which Blind Black women experience their stories?

— Audio Description Narrator: “A title appears, The Hair Tales” Tracey Ellis Ross sits across a table from Oprah. Flowers decorate the room. Photos of Oprah and her family.

TR:

If you watch television and films with audio description, you recognize that voice.

Tansy:
Hi I’m Tansy Alexander. I’m a Caucasian woman. I’m five foot seven, I have Auburn hair. I’m very athletic and active. I do all variety from narration to audio books, to commercials, promos trailers, IVR phone systems. I’ve done pretty much it all.

TR:

That’s from the time she joined me right here on the podcast in 2020.

— Original audio from episode
Tansy:

And if I may broach this subject, I do think that we need to see more inclusiveness on the narrator side.

TR:

Well that’s exactly the point of this episode, these continued series of episodes.

I reached out to Tansy to have a conversation on the podcast.
Here’s my email to her for context.

— Music begins: A slow piano with lots of ambience evoking a purposefully over dramatic melancholy vibe.

— With sounds of typing on a keyboard layered underneath, TR reads his email.

Hello Tansy
I hope you’re doing well.
I wanted to invite you back on the podcast.
I’m producing an episode continuing the conversation on the topic of cultural competency specifically as it relates to the choice of the narrator.
I’ve been vocal about this subject and I’m hoping you would want to share your point of view.
When you first appeared on the podcast you expressed that you agreed with the idea of equitable experiences in AD.
Last year, I referred to the HBO series “Insecure” which you narrated.
I expressed that I didn’t feel you should have been cast in that role as the series is heavily based in Black culture.
In this episode, I discussed the idea that narrators and others in the industry who believe in equity have the power to help
advance the change we want to see in the industry.
That is, turn down roles and or help find other narrators who are of the film’s or project’s culture.
In this current episode I’m producing, once again, you are narrating a series heavily entrenched in Black culture.
Would you be interested in speaking to me about your feelings on this?
You should know, I don’t want this to come across like any sort of personal attack on you, because it isn’t at all.
This is about making the AD consumers experience of film and television as close to what was imagined during its creation.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
t

TR:

That’s me!

I really do believe someone like Tansy who says she’s interested in…
— Tansy “more inclusiveness on the narrator side.”

could really help the AD industry become more equitable in their practice.

But, when listening back to the 2020 episode, the equity she’s seeking doesn’t seem to be about the AD consumer.

— From “2020 Episode
Tansy:

And if I may broach this subject, I do think that we need to see more inclusiveness on the narrator side.

I get plenty of work, but I still think there’s a gender bias in the industry for males to succeed.

It’s the same it’s been for the whole spectrum of Voice Over since I started over twenty years ago, the belief that a male will sell it better. For whatever reason; the voice will cut through or people listen more to a man than a woman. These are stereotypes that probably aren’t true at all. These decisions to use a man or a woman are extraordinarily subjective.

TR:

I get it! Subjective AF!

Tansy:

I used to do a lot of action, landing on the moon, war movies, I’ve done a few last year. I can do a romantic comedy, I can do a children’s thing, I can get in there and get gritty. But all of a sudden they decide oh well for all the Marvel we need to have men.

TR:

That’s what makes her response to my invitation difficult.

Hi Thomas.

How are you doing? I just saw this last night and wanted to think about it before I responded.

I appreciate that you’re take on the casting decisions in audio description.
I am an actress first and foremost, who accepts roles based on casting’s advice.
I work on all genres of projects including Sci-Fi, documentary, rom-com, adventure, animation, horror, etc.

It would seem a better fit for this interview if you interviewed casting directors/project managers for audio description.
In that way, you could outline that you feel like all people who narrate a project should always look like the majority of people in the project, or
at least always be from the group that the project is based on.
Those casting people are the decision makers who could enact that change.

Although I always enjoy a great discussion with you, I have to take a pass this time.
Really appreciate you thinking of me!

Warm regards

Tansy

TR:

Thankfully, I have the audio to pull from last year’s episode that directly responds to Tansy’s point.

— Sample: “Rewind Selecta”

— Original audio from 2022 Black Art White Voices

TR:
AD professionals, you have a choice.
If you’re aware of the inequity and say you want to see the change, well, recognize your power.

Narrators!

I find it really hard to believe that you don’t recognize when you’re not right for the project. Rather than finding a way to personally justify that with yourself, why not use your influence to suggest that someone else is hired for the position? Perhaps it’s someone you know and recommend, but in general, speaking up about the subject, being an ally, well that’s powerful.

— Sample: “You will not replace us” Chants of Alt Right Mob.
TR:

Is this call for equitable representation threatening?

When it comes to the voice of the narrator on films that are culturally specific, we’re talking about a small piece of the pie. The total number of films and television shows that are focused on BIPOC stories is still a fraction of the total films made today.

White narrators get plenty of work. I don’t see any reason for them to feel threatened by these comments.

This issue is just one part of a much bigger problem.
It goes beyond films like Black Panther or In the Heights. Shows like Insecure. It goes beyond the voice. It’s about the visibility of Black and other people of color

That’s seeing and acknowledging color on screen and stage. It’s recognizing that Blind and Low Vision includes people of color.
— Reverse Dream Harp bringing back to present

TR:

Let’s be clear, I’ve come across other shows with insensitive casting; Abbott Elementary, Reasonable Doubt and others.
But this isn’t about individual shows.
It’s not about my individual point of view,
it’s not about one narrator.
This is about centering the Blind community in audio description.

(The full community!)

— Law and Order scene change sound

TR:

When I finally decided I had to speak about this here on the podcast, I knew I needed to hear from Black women.
I’m Black, but I’m also a bald man!
I like to think it’s still by choice but let’s be real, my options are limited when it comes to my crown.

Hair tales isn’t something I would probably choose to watch on my own.
However, I could see where I’d watch this with my daughters.
I’d enjoy sitting back and listening to their comments as they agree or disagree with one of the experts or explains something to me about a particular hairstyle.

today’s conversation is specific to the audio description.

audio description should always center Blind people.

I needed to hear from Black Blind women.

So I put the word out that I was seeking input on this topic.
to be clear, I was looking for opinion not a specific point of view.
If someone wanted to speak in favor of color Blind casting for AD narrators, cool, bring it.

I didn’t get much in the way of feedback. I shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ve come to recognize phases we go through as consumers of audio description. I’ll use my own experience as an example.

— Music Begins: An upbeat dance track…

Phase 1: Shock

“What? I can experience movies again?”

Phase 2: Denial
“I don’t know, this is probably going to suck. How will this work, someone explaining what’s happening? Augh! I don’t know.”

Phase 3: Bliss, Over Appreciation

How was the movie?

Oh my goodness! It was so good, it had audio description!
I can’t say anything bad about this film because it has audio description.
— Fades down while talking continues

Phase 4: Back on Earth

How was the movie?

Two thumbs down! I’ll never get those 90 minutes back.
— Fades down while talking continues

No longer are you easily entertained. Access alone isn’t cutting it.

Phase 5: Critical

How was the movie?

There was this one scene that stands out to me. The production is incredible.
— Fades out to an enthusiastic monolog…

TR:
Considering the fact that AD honestly hasn’t been that accessible for that long, I imagine there are a lot of people in the early phases.

— “It’s a man’s world”… James Brown

Let’s be honest, I have some privileges in this world.
I’m a straight cisgendered man. I don’t have all the privilege afforded to my white brethren, but I do recognize those within my reach.

— Roland Martin Clip:

Roland Martin: Recent study shows the most abused group on social media, Black women and women of color.
Jennifer Farmer: So what we’re seeing is pervasive attack. If you’re a Black woman and have a social media account, if you’ve been on Twitter, chances are you already experienced abuse. Eighty-four percent of the tweets that go to Black women contain some type of abusive or harassing message. The other thing that we’re finding is that if you have the courage to state your opinion, you’re also going to be attacked.

TR in Conversation with Casandra:
On that note, if you ever get any sort of pushback from this episode, please let me know.
I don’t want none of that going on.
Casandra:
you know, it’s fine.
I’ve had people give me pushback for certain things that I put on Tik Tok.
I have like, nearly 9000 followers on there. Honestly, people are gonna have their opinions
I don’t care.

TR in Conversation with Casandra: 22:45
Okay, there you go.

TR:
No one should have to deal with harassment, bullying or threats for their opinion. Especially when we’re talking about fairness and equity.

I’m more than willing to listen to contrary opinions but I’m not interested in racist nonsense.

If you have anything to say, please send it my way.
ReidMyMindRadio@gmail.com

— Sample: Sesame Street “Ok all you cats and kitties, it’s time for a little addition. Can you dig it! Here we go. Now! Adding is putting together! Mm.”

TR:
Factoring all of this into consideration, perhaps it helps explain the lack of public engagement and critical feedback on audio description.

— Sample “You got the mic… use it!” Ice Cube

I’m sure there are many Blind people who for them, this isn’t a concern.
Yes, they consume and enjoy audio description. Maybe they’re in that Bliss phase – just so happy to have access.
I don’t fault them for that because I understand the history of not having access to content.

Some people may think this is just a Black issue. A POC issue.
Meanwhile though, all AD consumers are affected.
The white washing of content denies all AD consumers access to a more authentic experience.
And isn’t that what we want?

(I guess it depends on how we define, we!)

— Music Begins: A bright, chill Hip Hop beat.

I want to send big shout outs to;
* Casandra Xavier AKA Caspher.
You can find her on Tick Tock.

Casandra:

At Caspher 31 CASPHER 31
On Instagram Cassandra dot Xavier(Spells out)
For those that can see. You want to look for the profile picture of a black lady wearing a crop top sweater standing next to a boxing bag, flexing her muscles.

TR:
Uh oh!

To all my sisters who shared my request for input as well as some others who talked to me for this episode. Your voices may have not made it into the final edit, but you were in my mind throughout the production.

— Airhorn!

You know you’re all official members of the Reid My Mind Radio family!

You too Tansy! Family can disagree, but I believe in leaving a place at the table to have a conversation.

You know, you too can be Reid My Mind Radio Fam!;
Subscribe or Follow Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts.
We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com
Just remember, that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample: (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick)
Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro
Peace!

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