Flipping the Script on Audio Description – Access 4 All
Wednesday, August 25th, 2021“I came to this country to start leading the project and start putting all the technicalities together to start doing captions and audio description in Spanish, serving the Latino community.”
Maria Victoria Diaz PhD, an Electrical Engineer left Colombia to help “Flip the Script” not only on Audio Description but access in general for native Spanish speaking people.
President of Dicapta & Chair of Dicapta Foundation, her efforts continue to prove that creating access for one group can benefit others as well. In this episode hear about ;
* The struggle for Spanish AD
* Access 4 All – Dicapta Foundation’s solution assuring Audio Description can be shared across platforms.
* Go CC – providing access for the Deaf Blind to content and emergency information
… and more.
It’s fitting that I open this episode with my own Spanish translation.
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TR:
Reid My Mind Radio Family! Before we get into this latest episode, I need your help.
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— Music Begins A mid-tempo Reggaeton Hip Hop influenced groove.
TR:
Greetings, my beautiful brothers and sisters.
Welcome back to another episode of Reid My Mind Radio.
You know, the podcast featuring compelling people impacted by all degrees of
blindness and disability
TR in Spanish:
Saludos, mis hermosos hermanos y hermanas.
Bienvenido a otro episodio de Reid My Mind Radio.
Ya sabes, el podcast que presenta
a personas atractivas
afectadas por todos
los grados de ceguera y discapacidad.
TR:
We’re continuing with our Flipping the Script on Audio Description series.
TR in Spanish:
Continuamos con nuestra serie Flipping the Script en Audio Description.
TR:
By now, you should have an idea of where we’re going in this episode. If not, give me a moment for my theme music, and then I’ll introduce you to my new friend and she’ll make it clear.
TR in Spanish:
A estas alturas, debería tener una idea de hacia dónde vamos en este episodio.
Si no, dame un momento para mi tema musical, y luego te presentaré a mi nueva amiga y ella te lo dejará claro.
— Reid My Mind Theme Music
MV Diaz:
“I came to this country to start leading the project and start putting all the technicalities together to start doing captions and audio description in Spanish, serving the Latino community.”
TR:
That’s Maria Victoria Diaz.
MV Diaz:
I used to be Maria Victoria and now I’m just Maria, in this country.
TR:
I like people to feel at home around me.
And she said I can call her Vicky.
— Music begins –
MV Diaz:
I’m from Colombia. I’m Latina. I have tan skin and brown eyes, my hair is over my shoulders usually is how I wear my hair.
I’m the President of the Dicapta and the director of the board of the Dicapta Foundation.
I’m an electronic engineer. I’m hard of hearing.
My pronouns, she/hers.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
Tell me a little bit about you. And let’s start with how you became interested in audio description.
MV Diaz:
I started working as an engineer in a television company in my country.
The first time that I saw captions in my country was working in television, and I was like, What is that for?
I started to be interested in captions.
Specifically being hard of hearing, that was like natural to be interested in that kind of service.
Then I started working, specifically researching about accessibility features, specifically, to make television accessible.
That’s where I started like, 20 years ago, trying to push in my country for some policy or regulations for captions to be included.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
How successful was that?
MV Diaz:
It was just good luck.
At that time, I had friends in the television industry, some of my colleagues from school, were the technical director of different television stations there.
TR:
Actually, that wasn’t the so called good luck. Those friends in high places didn’t make it happen. At least not until the government got involved.
MV Diaz:
So they came to me suddenly, one day, like, oh, there’s this new regulation that we need to comply, then help us please.
I think that one person, the government had a child who was deaf, and then that’s how they became interested. Sadly, that’s the reason most of the time.
And so I started doing captions for every single television station in the country and training.
TR:
What began as a two person team in 15 days grew to 20 people.
MV Diaz:
We needed to cover all the regulation that came at that time.
We help them to install the technical facilities for captioning
So the sad part of the story is that that regulation came at still the same 20 years after just like, two hours per week one newscast in the per channel.
TR:
Soon after that work began with captions, she met a guy who was Blind. He had a question.
MV Diaz:
Have you consider doing something for me?
And I was like, what kind of service Do you need, or how I can serve your needs?
And so he was telling me about Kurosawa’s “Dream” movie. And
he was describing for me every single scene of that movie, and I was like, how you can tell me those details about that movie If you don’t see. So I was so interested in his specific process.
TR:
That movie, Dreams, a 1990 film by acclaimed film maker
Akira Kurosawa was subtitled.
MV Diaz:
It was like a team effort, in a way with friends from his university.
I started researching how I can be involved in that field. It was like 20 years ago.
It was aligned with my interest in I wanted to be a musician, when I finished my high school, and I couldn’t because according to my doctors, being hard of hearing, it was not a good idea to be a musician.
I was like, Okay, I have to fight to do something else to overcome barriers.
TR:
At this point Dicapta, Vicky’s team of 20, was working on caption and Audio Description
when she was approached by one of the 2 private Colombian broadcast company’s.
They wanted to buy her out and control the market. Her response?
MV Diaz:
No, I’m not interested.
I started looking for options to serve to in Spanish in other places. And I found out that in the United States, services in Spanish were like really nothing available, not for captions, not for description at that time. So I decided to write an email to the Department of Ed asking how I can participate in your initiatives. And they told me, no, you have to talk to the television stations or to the channels. And you have to ask them. We’re not the right source for business.
TR:
Vicky’s response set her on a path and in my opinion says a lot about her motivation.
MV Diaz:
I’m not looking for business, I want to know how I can contribute in the discussion.
So they just mentioned it to me that they have a television Access Program. I’m talking about 15 years ago, 16 years ago.
TR:
It’s government, so that means lots of paperwork.
MV Diaz:
I can tell you that I was in Colombia, in my office preparing a proposal for the Department of Ed,
I had no idea how to do business in the United States… the right words to use or how to fill these forms. And I just started reading the forms , filling them up giving my ideas there.
I guess that it was a really good proposal, because we just got funded,
TR:
Come on, you know it can’t be that easy.
MV Diaz:
They call me but you can’t run a project, serving the Latino community from your country, you have to be here. And I was like, okay!
TR:
In about two weeks, she gathers her belongings, leaves Colombia and is in
the states.
MV Diaz:
I just really thank the Department of Ed gave us the opportunity to just try to add value, and to discuss and to tell what we think.
It’s wonderful for me that I every single time that I try to do it, sometimes I have to work a little bit more. I can talk with whoever I wanted to. And I can, I can just at least try. Most of the times the answer is no, we’re not interested. But it is okay. Just to have the opportunity to share what you think.
TR:
Thankful for that opportunity, Vicky uses her voice to continue her mission.
MV Diaz:
I came to this country to start leading the project and start putting all the technicalities together to start doing captions and audio description in Spanish, serving the Latino community.
TR:
While Dicapta is a for profit company, most of the work being done has been through the nonprofit Dicapta Foundation.
MV Diaz:
We really have some new partnerships doing dubbing in Spanish but most of the work that we do in audio description and captions is funded by the Department of Ed.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
So accessing audio description for television, and cable here in the States requires the sap the secondary audio programming.
And it just happens to be that that’s the same channel that delivers Spanish translations in for shows in English. So does this mean that it’s impossible for a person who speaks Spanish to be blind? Hashtag sarcasm?
MV Diaz:
(Laughs)
Kind of…
Spanish language television, They don’t have a Spanish in their SAP, they don’t have anything in the sap.
So we’re not competing with the Spanish translation in the Spanish television, we’re competing with the Spanish translation in the English television.
The big problem here is that the CVA didn’t include Spanish.
So the first thing is audio description in Spanish has to be mandated.
What I have learned is that the FCC is following the mandate from the Congress. So how to push for Spanish to be included? I don’t know Tom
TR:
Remember, the CVAA or the 21st Century Telecommunications Accessibility Act
requires local TV station affiliates of ABC, CBS,
Fox, and NBC located in the top 60 TV markets
to provide 87.5 hours per calendar quarter.
How’s this for a regulation; AD on everything!)
MV Diaz:
Telemundo Okay, they are part of NBC. NBC is under the regulation, why? Telemundo is not under regulation?
TR:
Hmm good question. But, bad answer.
MV Diaz:
No, because it is not. Period.
But why, if they are under regulation and Telemundo is part of NBC? No,
I became part of the disability Advisory Committee of the FCC, and I was like, I’m ready. This is exactly the place where we’re gonna change the story.
No, no, no, no,. (Said slowly with lots of frustration)
TR:
When it comes to advocating for Spanish AD, it often comes down to priorities.
MV Diaz:
We have different problems in our community, bigger than the accessibility, I have to say that.
We are in a different place in history right now. Our concern is more, jobs, education and immigration. We are trying to fight different fights. We don’t have Latino consumers as organize. The Blind Latino consumers that we have been working with, it is not enough.
I don’t know, my grandma said something, but I can’t translate. How is your Spanish Tomas?
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
Well!
— Sample Price is Right loser tone!
MV Diaz:
My grandma used to say just one little bird is not able to call winter.
TR:
There’s power in numbers.
MV Diaz:
The consumer organizations, they know that that’s a problem.
If you have to go to the Congress, or if you have to go to the FCC, asking for specific questions, is going to be like priority number 10, maybe or, let’s say, five to be more generous.
, but is never going to be their first priority. I kind of understand now
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
I think that can be said about a lot of communities.
There are definitely people who say, oh, why are you talking about audio description all the time, we need jobs. I get that. I also see a relationship between jobs and audio description, education and audio description.
TR:
Couldn’t these lower priority issues serve as vehicles to elevate those considered higher priority. Especially when putting into context?
That’s what I mean when I say, “Audio Description is about much more than entertainment.
MV Diaz:
Our a Latino community communicates in Spanish. We are trying to have that. In here. We are trying to find our space and our beliefs, our roots, our culture alive.
It is incredible. The amount of kids that are Spanish speakers coming from different countries don’t speak English yet need access and they don’t have the access that they need.
We are working with the DCMP and they are doing a really great job. And we are trying to include some educational titles there. But in entertainment we are really, really far
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
I’m thinking about the streaming companies, they’re not obligated under the CVAA. But they do decide to go ahead and stream audio description, Univision, Telemundo, none of them are interested in doing it at all? Have you not been able to talk to them?
MV Diaz:
Yeah, I have talked to them. I don’t know. They think that I’m just a girl trying again.
But no, the thing is that, for example, Telemundo at the beginning, what they told me like three years ago, they didn’t have SAP in the whole network.
So they didn’t want to provide the service for this kind of part of the audience and not to others
We have been working with funds from the department of Ed.
TR:
Those fund enabled Vicky to have one request.
MV Diaz:
We’re gonna provide you with the description. You just have to put it on there.
Even that is really hard tom.
We included audio description but the cable companies. Don’t pass it.
For example, Channel 22. They are an international television channel. They are in DirecTV, they are in
we provided Audio Description. we created all the audio track.
Okay, DirecTV, No audio description. Spectrum, no audio description.
TR:
Cable companies, you had one job!
But regulations do really go a long way.
MV Diaz:
Caption is not that bad. I can tell you because of the regulations. The FCC regulation includes Spanish captions. So we are safe there.
Just because the regulation is there, they just know what it is. They know what it’s about.
TR:
In the rare event that the cable company does pass the AD, you better catch it that first time being aired because it probably won’t happen again. Whether on that same channel or another.
The problem, many of us have experienced.
we know a show or film has AD,
maybe we saw it on one channel or on a DVD,
but another broadcaster or streaming network doesn’t pass it.
MV Diaz:
Let’s try to do it ourselves. And that’s why we started working in a different direction creating technology and creating Access 4 All.
TR:
Access 4 All is a central repository for any accessibility asset.
That’s the actual digital caption, audio description and ASL files for example.
No matter the language! They’re all stored in one location.
Access 4 All serves as a clearinghouse.
MV Diaz:
Dicapta is a really small organization. We need influential organization or powerful organization to believe in the value of a clearinghouse the importance of sharing the resource that we have.
That’s why we are creating like a membership model under the foundation. The idea is for people to come and say, okay, I created this audio description and no matter if you are in Mexico or if you are in London or if you are in Italy, that specific program is going to be accessible.
So that’s the big dream.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
When you say a membership, so for example, Netflix would come in as a member, the BBC would come in as a member, Argentina television would come in.
so they would have a membership. And they would upload all of their audio description tracks to this repository.
MV Diaz:D
So who’s member of this repository right now?
New Day films, some movies from PBS POV and the Spanish content that we are creating with funds from the Department of Ed.
TR:
Plus, it empowers us as users to access the assets ourselves.
MV Diaz:
You just download the app. You just can watch the program with audio description, you can read captions, or you can do the ASL version of the program if it’s available.
TR:
The app developed with funds from the Department of Education, is free!
Check it out!
download the app…
Start the film, while your app is open… And voila!
TR:
Right now Dicapta is working on creating a searchable catalog. Already, they have over 300 hours of content.
— Dicapta audio icon
TR:
That little tune or audio icon was created by consumers of audio description and members of the Dicapta advisory committee.
It’s formed by the notes D, C, A, and G.
D for Description, C for Collaboration, and
A Accessibility.
The sequence finishes with a G major chord that stands for Go!
It includes a graphical element as well.
It’s formed by two purple triangularly shaped capital letters “A”.
The letters are thick and slanted toward each other so that
the adjacent sides are in a vertical position.
A blue number 4 sits over the letter A on the left.
The horizontal bar that goes from left to right on the number 4 matches the horizontal bar that goes from left to right on the letter A and also covers a small portion of the letter A on the right.
MV Diaz:
What we are proposing is to add that icon at the beginning of the program or during our in them guide, just to show that is in the repository.
I have tried to talk to the big players in the industry. But it is not an easy conversation.
my invitation is this Okay, so that if you don’t have a solution, we have one maybe you can use these one or you can start trying it and see if it if it works and if not someone come with a better one, right? But today we don’t have any solution. We are not sharing, we are creating the same track twice instead of Sharing the one that is already created.
— Sesame Street Cookie Monster shares with Elmo
Elmo:
Oh, Cookie Monster would share his cookie?
Cookie Monster:
Yep, it’s against my primal instinct, but you share with me, and me share with you.
TR:
There are some who understand.
MV Diaz:
Nickelodeon. Latin America, we launched a project with them using “Access 4 All” and they did audio description for some shows. And then they are promoting the show.
Maybe that’s kind of the support that we would need.
TR:
There’s more to be hopeful about.
MV Diaz:
the world is changing. And I see a better scenario for accessibility now that the one that I found when I came 15 years ago, the conversation is different. More people knows about accessibility and about the descriptions. So I think that consumers are more aware of that. Okay. Maybe it’s possible. I just have to say, Tom, I really thank Netflix. They are, they are they’re showing different ways. To support accessibility, and they are including Spanish, they are asking for audio description in Spanish to be included.
Hopefully, if they are showing that the assets are going to be there, or maybe somebody is going to decide to share.
TR:
It’s probably worth mentioning that Apple too offers access in Spanish.
I know there are decision makers or at least some who have the ear of decision makers
who listen to the Flipping the Script series, and
hopefully the podcast in general.
I believe many of them are sincerely about providing access because they see it as fair and just.
If you are an independent content creator, I encourage you to talk to Vicky and get your captions, audio description and any access assets on to Access 4 All.
MV Diaz:
it’s supposed to be a membership.
For now Dicapta Foundation, we’re not charging anything to independent producers.
We have a basic agreement saying that you are donating for the Clearinghouse and you’re not charging the user to use. And in case that someone else is interested in having that, that specific accessibility, they’re going to contact the owner to say like, Okay, I’m interested in this audio description to be downloaded to put it somewhere else
I think that we Dicapta, we’re going to concentrate our effort in educational programming and in independent filmmakers.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
Let’s talk about the work that you’ve been doing with a community that’s often overlooked, and that’s the deafblind community. Tell me how Dicapta is serving that community?
MV Diaz:
I invited the daughter of a friend of mine who is Deaf Blind to one of our advisory meetings. We were talking about television and about movies and about access. We were trying one app. We asked her for her opinion, oh, my goodness. She was like… Are you serious?
We don’t have access to television. I haven’t watched television in my whole entire life, how you think that I’m going to go to the movies. And it was really a bad moment in that room.
TR:
Come on, we know by now, Vicky turns these sorts of situations into good.
She reached out to more consumers for input.
MV Diaz:
And so we started trying to, to bring captions to braille displays in a in a way that that they can have some kind of access, those of them that are Braille readers. So that is a minority among the minority and the minority. But given access to the caption streams through braille displays, was the general idea to start working with. So it was like four or five years ago that we started working with that project, and we got funds from the Department of Health. And we were able to produce the solution but then again, the problems came and the industry and the practices
TR:
Of course they did!
Technically, captions on Braille displays is easy. The problem is when your captions don’t include the name of the person speaking. So it’s just an endless stream of words without context.
MV Diaz:
We try to push again, like, changing best practices just include identification of the speaker in the captions or streams just to serve the deafblind community. And so we produce documents and we spread the word in the industry in the caption providers to whoever is creating captions just provide identification for the speakers to make sure that no matter what technology is coming, captions are gonna serve the Deaf Blind community.
[
TR:
The service is called Go CC and provides even more for this community.
MV Diaz:
We work with FEMA to provide emergency alert information.
we work with the Helen Keller National Center. And that’s the reason why the product is as good as it is because we work with the consumers and they created what they needed.
It was not our invention, we just did what they asked us to do.
Next step in that is just to find a foundation or an organization that has all the capacity to share that into the community in a way that we can’t do.
TR:
Dicapta’s expertise is in solving problems and creating access.
MV Diaz:
We put together captions and audio description in stream text to make sure that the deafblind communities serve. So we’re doing that through Access 4 All. So if you use access for all you can use it from your Braille display too. And you can read captions, read the descriptions. And it is done. It is already there.
TR:
The challenge is the speed of that stream of information in relation to the actual film. It could be difficult to stay in sync.
Yes, someone could read the transcript and avoid the movie all together, if watching alone.
MV Diaz:
I don’t want you to go by yourself to the movies, I want to go with you.
Same thing with television, coming from our culture, we don’t do things alone, we do things with families all the time. So it is the idea is to have sync it with the movie, just to make sure that you can be part of a group of people watching the movie.
it is the experience of being with someone else. What is different,
TR:
Family. Friends. Community!
Sharing… y’all feel what’s happening here. It’s about more than access for Vicky.
That young lady who never had access to television, they’re on Vicky’s advisory team.
MV Diaz:
$
I’m here to show you that maybe I apologize. But we do we do better now and then try to do better things.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
Congratulations. I believe you got a television access award. Is that what it was? Tell us about it.
MV Diaz:
Yeah. It is wonderful.
I have to tell that that the Department of Education hasn’t been recognized enough for their support to access. So those who have been working with them, we know that they have spent I don’t know how many millions of dollars supporting captions at the beginning before that, the regulation of captions and then audio description for years too.
But it was really not clear if they had plans to continue supporting description, especially after audio description is already mandated by the FCC.
The educational part of it is not as regulated for the network’s.
So that’s why the Department of Ed decided to continue the program.
We got one of the television access awards. We are so happy.
TR:
We should all be happy!
At least those of us who say we care about access.
MV Diaz:
We’re going to make sure that Access 4 All is a reality. Not just for our community, we’re working with English language content two. So every single hour of audio description or captioning that we create is going to be shareable in our clearing house, and is going to be accessible, no matter if you are watching it in one television station, or in any other is going to be accessible using their app
It’s gonna be five years collecting audio description, collecting captions, and asking others to join this effort.
So at least for the educational programming, I think that we’re going to have very good news to report at the end of these five years.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
Okay, so this is a hard question. What are you doing? When you’re not creating all this accessibility?
MV Diaz:
Laughing…
Oh, I’m playing my flute. I’m learning piano. Okay. They pandemia show me my piano in the middle of the living room.
My daughter’s used to play piano because mom wanted them to be the biggest artists. They decided that they don’t like to play.
TR in Conversation with MV Diaz:
they said that was you Mom, not us.
MV Diaz:
Yeah. So I had this big coffee table in the middle of the living room. Coffee Table.
(Hearty laugh along with TR.)
So I have to decide I have two choices. The first one is just giving my piano to someone that is going to use it. Or taking some piano lessons. Yeah.
And I love the music that you play.
I think that we would go to the same party.
TR:
If you’re throwing a party and
you want to invite a strong advocate and someone who is dedicated to access or
if you want to learn more about the great work taking place at Dicapta, open your favorite browser and point it to;
When it comes to Audio Description, “Good enough, isn’t good enough”, says Eric Wickstrom, Director of Audio Description at