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.
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