Reid My Mind

— Clock Ticking
TR:
–(Yelling in a Filtered, over modulated voice) Times up!

TR:
Well, that was then.

If you’re just tuning in and you don’t know what I’m referring to, please go back and listen to the episode last month titled, Time’s UP!

It’s the latest version of what I’ll call a protest by podcast. My own rage against the machine! That is, the systemic exclusion of narrators of color from audio description.

The episode helps me cope with the feelings; frustration, unfairness, pissed offativity.

— Filtered voice: (Well actually, that’s not a word!)

They know exactly what I’m talking about!

Sometimes you just got to get it out of your system.

today, I’m sticking to the place where I landed. That’s focusing on those who appreciate, respect and promote access that reflects the art of the global majority. Those who believe in tearing down the practice of exclusion in order to create audio description that truly centers the Blind Community… the full, rich, diverse community.

Y’all hear that….
— Birds chirping. begins to raise in volume.

It sounds like a new day is dawning.

I’m Thomas Reid the host and producer of this here podcast…
I told you before; (mischievous hmm) time’s up! There’s a real change underway.

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

TR:
Allow me to introduce you to the team, out of the UK called Sound Scribe.
First up, Reid My Mind Radio family and alumni, Elaine Lillian Joseph.

Elaine:
I’m a black West Indian woman. Pronouns. She her from Birmingham (Woo!) in the UK. I am in my 30s. Today. I have my hair in a bun, and I wear glasses.
and I’m currently in London, and it’s actually sunny here, which is rare.

TR:
Rare, but fitting.
I told you, it’s the dawning of a new day.

Elaine:
My role in SoundScribe is as a co-founder and principally as an audio describer, also across the kind of project management as well.

So yeah, that’s me. Woo!

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
And Elaine brought her own Woo. I like that.

Elaine:
I wasn’t going to wait for the Woo’s.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
I hear you! I bring my woos wherever I go.

TR:
Let’s keep those Woo’s going for Lesta. L E S T A.

Lesta:
I’m an East Asian woman. I’m Chinese, and I’m visually impaired as well. I’m quite pale with freckles. I have long black, sort of waist length hair in a ponytail. I’m always a little bit glamorous. I’m quite petite, athletic, and my pronouns are, she her.
For sound scribe. I’m basically a consultant. So, I comment on the audio description that is provided, or like I come in quite early to help the derivation of the audio description. And I basically complain a lot. I feel that’s my job, but I also comment on the actual performances as well, and the space that they do it in, as well as how they execute it.

TR:
Complaining can also be called quality control.
We’re talking about a member of the target audience who can provide helpful feedback on the script, narration and mix.
Improving the final product before release.

Next, meet Shivaangee.

Shivaangee:
Or you can call me Shiv. My pronouns are they and she and I am a person in my 30s with heritage from India.

I’m kind of light brown skinned, with black hair, dark eyes. I have two nose piercings in my left nostril. I’m wearing a necklace and more earrings, so some jewelry, and a green netted top for the heat today, and freshly, freshly shaved sides to my hair, which feel great.

I co-founded soundscribe with Elaine, though, I’d say Elaine kind of does a little bit more leadership of in a direction we’re going, and I sort of support with that And some of the project management as well.

I’m actually trained and work as a dance artist, and that’s a really fun collaboration to do with Elaine, because I guess I can bring a little bit of the embodied experience of moving and dancing, and Elaine brings a lot of experience in all thing’s audio description.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
shiv, tell me a little bit about how you got into AD.

Shivaangee:
A friend and choreographer called Mira Patel does a lot of work with blind, visually impaired, deaf and hearing-impaired communities in order to understand how Indian classical dance, which is what I’m trained in, and what she’s trained in, can be more accessible for these communities.

So, it was through coming on board to her work that I was trained as an audio describer.

Through that work, I felt like access and accessibility was something I could really relate to on other levels, in other ways that I have experience of marginalization and othering.

I just really deeply connected to the importance of accessibility and how everybody can benefit from disability justice, and it felt like a really foundational area that can inform;
How Indian classical dance can be made more accessible to people who don’t know what Indian classical dance is.
How dance can become more accessible.
How we can start to think about dance without prioritizing the visual sense.
How we can decenter sighted and non-disabled perspectives and dance.

TR:
Shiv isn’t the only dancer in SoundScribe.

Lesta:
I have a background in the arts, so I’m an architect and I’m also a dancer as well at the same time.

I understand space really well, and I understand movement really well.

TR:
Of course Lesta also brings her personal experience with audio description.

Lesta:
When I first became visually impaired as an adult, I started using audio description, and I was just really grumpy about it.

I use audio description with like films and TV and sometimes theater, but it’s just really bad.

I’m just grumpy about the fact that I have to watch so many things that are just really badly described, and therefore I don’t quite understand what’s going on

Because I’m in the UK, it’s called SI, sight impaired, or if your blind, it’s severely sight impaired. I’m Si, so I do have some sight.

It is a choice for me to use my eyes or not.

TR:
Lesta went on to say that the quality really does vary. Sometimes it’s better. But when it’s bad, it’s really bad!

Lesta:
I would prefer to go through the physical pain and also not understanding what’s going on than using audio descriptions.

TR:
Ouch!

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
Okay, are you still grumpy today? (laughs) I mean about AD. Have you seen any improvement in the state of audio description and what you’re getting in a movie theater?

Lesta:
The difficulty is that quite a lot of film theaters don’t even provide it. So even if it was well done on a film, it’s not provided so you can’t even access it. I would say that is pretty problematic in the UK.

I use Netflix, and sometimes I go for the audio description. It is getting slightly better, so at least they are doing the work to actually describe it well, I just find it quite robotic, because I feel like audio description is effectively a performance. It’s reflection of the art form that you’re kind of viewing, whether it’s dance or theater, film, TV, it’s all part of the performance trip, because you’re kind of describing what you’re viewing.

It has to marry.

TR:
That’s a union between the content and the audio description.

— Sound of a door locking with a wooden latch.

— Music begins, a “house’ inspired, upbeat bouncy bass drum, with crescendo reverse cymbals and finger snaps as snares.

TR:
Now that we’ve met the individuals, let’s find out how they became SoundScribe.

Elaine:
so me and Shiv actually go back to Uni, and then a mutual friend of ours basically put us in touch, and was like, you’re an audio describer and you’re an audio describer.

Me and Shiv went to a dance event that was about audio description and then we went to a pub, and then we just bitched and complained.

Oh, we really have a lot in common, as audio describers, basically, but specifically as audio describers who aren’t white. So I really took a lot of solidarity from that, and I just felt like I had so many ideas, and it was really great to be able to have someone else who shared those ideas.

We joined forces, and we’ve kind of been growing since then.

TR:
Joining forces based on philosophies, yeh, I can get with that!

Elaine:
I really felt like we were just so aligned in terms of the philosophy we already had individually for our practices as audio description wanting to find like minded people. For me, it was really important to bridge that gap at that time, on a personal level, between the work that I was doing but also the audience that I was doing that work for.

At the time, I was working in TV, and I just really felt like to grow as an audio describer, I needed to be in contact with more blind folk, but also to grow as a art form, as a practice.

I just felt like that was the kind of missing key for me.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
What was it that made you feel as though it was important to be in contact with the community. So being in community, why was that important?

Elaine:
I guess I felt like the guidelines that I was given and that I kind of trained under, which are perfectly fine, but I just really felt like they had been shaped by sighted people, and that at some point it felt like maybe, maybe those voices had been lost and that voice just hadn’t Been really updated.

So I found that I was having conversations like when I was first on your podcast, we were just talking about describing race, for example, and just this idea that, like for blind users, that there’d be, like a default conception of who we’re describing, and that default is white. And I really felt like if we just had some voices who were Blind and people of color, then we would just cut through this need to have these endless conversations. I just really felt like, if these people were just in the room, then things would move so much faster.

With any craft, it just makes sense to include the end users as part of the production of the art.
I just think it utterly enriches it.
I think it cuts through any kind of biases that I will definitely have as like a sighted person. It broadens the kind of perspective of the audio description as well, like working. With you. Leicester is such a joy, because, literally, every single project I learned something new.

Leicester’s just pulled a really, a really sweet pose just highlight how angelic they are.

Lesta:
As a person that is both POC and disabled, I felt quite heard to be involved in the company as well, because existing as an intersectional person you’re effectively like an other of an other, and usually you’re sort of forgotten in many different kind of groups, because you’re kind of categorized as not quite that person in multiple ways. So usually your voice is forgotten.

So this was quite interesting, because my role and a bunch of other blind people was to just complain about stuff, and because I complained about stuff in a very ethnic way as well then I think they probably just picked up on it as well. So they’re kind of bitching in the cafe. Is the sort of the same mentality I have. So, yeah, it was just really wonderful to be heard. So thank you.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
I want to keep my facts straight. That wasn’t a cafe, that was a pub!

Lesta:
pub, yes,

Elaine:
exactly.

TR:
Y’all picking up on this idea of bitching or complaining?

It’s identifying the problems. As Lesta noted, it’s centering your full experience as a consumer.
Two different consumers with varying backgrounds will more than likely have two separate experiences, that’s cool! What’s not cool is deciding that one is the standard.

So my urging to the community… complain away!

First we complain, then we make change.

— Sound of two glasses clinking in a bar as in a toast!

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
Okay, so let’s move into your philosophy, your approach to audio description.

Elaine:
I was just thinking about some of the words that might really motivate us.
One of them is
generative.

So the idea that audio description can actually generate art.

For example, audio description led movement workshops. Sometimes they’re like, warm ups or warm downs, and often in those workshops, choreography is created with the cast, with the choreographer, with the rehearsal director, and then sometimes that choreography even makes it into the show itself, which is the most exciting outcome of those kinds of workshops.

So really seeing audio description as a catalyst for performance making.

TR:
Elaine, Lesta and Shiv make up the core of SoundScribe, but part of their philosophy is to work with all sorts of folks from the Blind community.

Elaine:
Providing consultancy, training, providing sustainable jobs as well.
for example, sound engineers.

We work with a full range of different people, but wanting that to be focused as like blind led a big thing for us is anti objectivity, and by that, like we don’t ever want to kind of patronize anybody. We’re not making audio description that tells people how to think, but we do want to be proud and open about our subjectivity in our work.

That’s what feels really exciting about this.
Collaboration and creating something that is global majority led, and anti ableist as well.

Elaine:
So as Shiv mentioned, de centering sight as the primary way of accessing art.

Just trying to think about different ways of accessing art.

TR:
That can mean getting the artists, the content makers to think about the Blind audience, before the content is made.

Elaine:
When we come in from the beginning as audio describers, from the beginning of whatever the project is, it might be like a film that hasn’t been filmed yet. It might be a painting that hasn’t been painted, or a dance show.

We can help to shape a piece of art that is from the beginning thinking about blind and visually impaired people.

The exciting element for me working now within SoundScribe, is getting to work on shows that I actually want to go and see not working at the end, where we have a fixed product and we have to mold or do description to fit in, because then basically 10 times out of 10 that project has not been created with blind people in mind.

coming in from the beginning, I think is a really big part of our ethos, and sort of really privileged actually, to have found enough artists that also want to work in that way.

Shivaangee:
In contrast to a lot of audio describers currently out there, I think we also want to kind of treat audio description as a practice rather than just a service. So by practice we mean that it’s like a live and evolving thing where Elaine I and Lesta are well, and especially Elaine and I are kind of constantly re evaluating, like, well, what are the goals of this? What are the principles underpinning this? What are we trying to get to? What’s our ideal vision? So there’s a sense of it being a dynamic thing that is not just a fixed service, but we evolve as audio describers, and we evolve the way we do things, but also in terms of practice. It’s like a holistic thing. It informs our principles of;
how we work.
how we are with each other
how we work with the artist
what kind of things we’re advocating for beyond just having audio description,

And that feels maybe quite important to our philosophy as a collective.

TR:
Think of SoundScribe as providing tailored, custom AD. They measure each individual project separately and design the AD experience based on the objectives of the content.

It feels like it really serves the art. Enabling the SoundScribe team to grow as artists themselves.

Shivaangee:
We have so many conversations with new clients, where by just speaking to a potential new client about their work and what they’re creating that we get excited about. Oh my gosh, we could actually offer a completely different kind of audio description for this work.

That’s another reason why Elaine and I work so well, as we get really excited about the possibilities of things we have not actually tried yet and have not experienced in terms of audio description.

(Shivaangee:
We did a project where we trialed for the first time having audio descriptions that’s actually takes a format of a dialog between Elaine and myself, rather than a one person scripted thing. So the thing that people were listening to was a. Conversation between Elaine and I as we were in the audience watching the show.

We’re developing a methodology for improvised audio description, because actually, we’re finding that improvised audio description works a lot better for dance shows that are more improvised than set choreography.

So I guess it’s also being really curious and open and excited about pushing ourselves in terms of what we can offer, and not letting ourselves kind of fall short of the possibilities that might exist.

Lesta:
It’s performative, it’s an art form, and it’s responsive to the art form that you’re trying to describe. So if the dance performance was improvised, then the way you describe it has to be improvised, because you have no idea what they’re going to move like. So that’s a skill in itself.

Shivaangee”
And requires a different kind of preparation and a different kind of contact with the creative team.

TR:
You might be wondering if this customized approach, where SoundScribe is wearing their subjectivity on their sleeve affects their clientele.

Elaine:
Shiv is smiling!

Shivaangee:
I’m ready for this response. Elaine,

Elaine:
We are very intentional about who we work with and what kinds of projects we want to work with. And we’re very aware, alert to language, for example, if we’re going to work with this client, then they are anti ableist and they are anti racist, and they really, truly understand what those two words mean and why it matters to us in the world of accessibility.

I feel quite lucky that we’ve found so many artists that we do want to work with in this way, and that a lot of the work that we’re doing is quite experimental audio description.

We’re not really doing much traditional theater shows. A lot of it really is, like quite Avant Garde in terms of our clients. So that feels really great.

Shivaangee:
There’s so much to say about the intersection of race and disability. I’m just like, where do we begin?

Thomas, I was listening to some of your podcasts, and I think you speak really eloquently about being black and blind. It’s really refreshing to hear someone speaking about that intersection, because I guess we want to work with people who understand what anti racism is and how like intersectionality, like manifests in disability.

You can still bring whiteness with you if you’re disabled, you can be making an accessible piece of work that’s actually not that culturally accessible to people of color.

I guess I feel inspired by giving artists of color the opportunity to create really accessible work that is accessible for disabled people.

I guess I have qualms about disability justice also being led often by white people. So it’s really inspiring and satisfying when we can work to bring high quality, accessible work to artists of color.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
Have you ever been in a situation where you’re approached by someone and they don’t meet your requirements. Are you? Like, we can’t work with you.

Shivaangee:
that happens quite frequently, and quite unsurprisingly, we get a sense of that very quickly.

We’ll get a sense of, this is not going to work out. It’s thankfully, often quite obvious.

Sometimes we have a sense of like we could work with this client. Not everybody’s going to be in the same place when it comes to justice and understanding your practice of justice.
And often we have a conversation around we could work with this client, it will probably be a bit challenging for us in these ways, and we might have to do some reiterating of these principles and education. But then Elaine and I turn to each other and we’re like, do we have the capacity for that right now? Or, like, does the remuneration of this project allow for that kind of work to be done? And if not, then fuck it that’s they can choose someone else.

Lesta:
from my perspective, sometimes it’s quite a good thing to actually partake in these sorts of things. I’m quite hardened, so my viewpoint is like, one way to deal with this sort of thing is to explode it from the inside, you know, once you’re in, just start having a go, see what happens. You know, because then they’re not used to it.

They obviously want to listen or have the good intention to it’s just that they’re not at that right place quite yet.

— Clock ticking

TR:
I’m telling y’all… times up!

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
So you raised two projects, and I want to talk about that.
I’m very interested in the dialog AD. Can we start there?

Elaine:
so that’s a show that we’re actually going to do again, and I’m really, really excited, because hopefully we can come back with, like, basically, bigger, better tech.

It’s a really good example of an artist and producer who just got the vision from the beginning. They were like, such, yes, people anything that we needed, and that was the first time that we’d worked with Lesta as well.

It’s called Impact Driver. The artist is called Eve Stanton. And that was a show that featured live welding with a huge, massive welding container. It’s really awesome. I think five to six performers very, very improvised. Lots of solo work, duet work, writhing with metal to live musicians on opposite ends of the venue, playing guitar. So it was quite a loud experience, and because of where the container was, it meant that me and Shiv basically needed to be on opposite ends, especially because the performers were roaming, and you’d never know actually which path they take.

TR:
Ah, the idea of improvised AD makes even more sense in these circumstances.

Elaine:
It was also a really good example of leading ad workshop. It meant that the entire cast, then totally got it. They were like, Oh, this is what audio description is. They also started to think about their own choreography from a linguistic sense as well.

How can we name the things that we’re doing, which is really helpful for us, because that’s its own kind of audio description.

I would describe what I could see say in the front half of the stage, including in the welding container. And then Shiv was behind that, also describing. If a performer roamed beyond my sight line, then basically, Shiv would take over.

Performing it live, was really exhilarating.

Terrifying before the show starts, and then this calm just kind of descend, and you just go for it.

It felt really, dare I say punk. because the whole show felt really punked as well. So it was a kind of like loud, messy audio description.

Leicester came in at a super, super messy, moment, because we hadn’t actually tested hours at that point. And, yeah, it was really great.

I think we had maybe four or five visually impaired people who came along to that trial run and gave us some really, really invaluable feedback before the actual show.

Shivaangee:
Most of it was in darkness as well and four different speakers around the room. So it was very intense environment, even as a sighted audience member.

TR:
Sounds like another one of those situations where the AD could serve a broader audience.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
How are you all thinking about possibly using the back and forth aspect of it?
Are you thinking about ways where you can bring that into something else?

Shivaangee:
So we’re in conversations with a new client that we’ve not worked with before, and the work that they’re creating is all about visibility and invisibility of queerness, and it uses kind of a mirror and like a gray board as two key props in the work, where they use illusion and disappearing as A metaphor for their exploration.

There’s like the middle of the audience where you’ll get the Perfect Illusion. And then if you’re sitting anywhere, that’s not the middle of the audience, you will not benefit from that Perfect Illusion. So now they’re thinking, as they’re getting into staging, well how do we navigate this fact that 80% of the audience is not going to get our Perfect Illusion?

So in our conversation with them about audio description, we all came up with the idea of Elaine and I roaming the sets and kind of audio describing to each other, what we can see and what we can’t see as a way of really leaning into this thing of you’re not going to get a perfect view of what’s happening, and each person is going to get a slightly different view of the illusion.

They got really excited about how it can actually support their work and support this whole illusion that they’re trying to problem solve.

Lesta:
I think it’s like, the more different projects that basically you’re involved in, essentially, you can test out different ways of doing stuff. And if the clients are open, then you can just try it. It’s very experimental and very trial based. It’s quite exciting in that respect, because it’s the development of audio description as a entity that can be informed into sort of the general consensus as well.

Shivaangee:
We’re talking about the really optimistic experiences we’ve had where people, as Elaine said, have been like, yes, producers and yes, artists who have been like, we love this. We love the experimental, creative potential, body description. Let’s go all out. But I feel like that’s definitely not status quo in the industry and a lot of people just simply don’t have the budget.
They don’t have the capacity, time wise, in their creation schedule to give us that much play time.

So I’d say just to balance out, we do bump into a lot of no’s as well that like that sounds great for the future, but for this time round, we have this many days and this much money and this to work with.

It feels important to also name that these are optimistic scenarios where we find these wonderful artists,

TR:
Reality checks are necessary.

But these artistic, experimental projects will inevitably make their way into the mainstream.
Not all at once or as radical, but rather small aspects of them will show up here and there.

Access doesn’t have to be solely functional.
It can go beyond the access and do more.

Lesta:
When me and Shiv did many lifetimes, she sat next to me, and we were testing her audio description, and I was sort of saying, Oh, but like, and it was improvised as well. So she did a really great job in general. But like, they were like, seven dancers, and they all had really different characters and the way they moved, because I can still use some of my site, and I can still understand the blobs in front of me, sort of So I was like, this person kind of looks like a martial artist. He’s, like, really dynamic. This guy’s like, all over the place, like roaming around outside of this, the room and everything. And this one is kind of like really intimate, because it was all about grief, the whole the whole piece. And I said, you know, maybe the way you describe it, in your language and in how you deliver it can be different, depending on the solo, because it’s describing their intention of demonstrating grief of death in a very, very personal way. That was an example of, you know, like how the how audio description can be an art form itself, like that.

Shivaangee:
I remember you saying you wouldn’t have necessarily have come to watch the show if we hadn’t brought you as a consultant.

That makes Leicester’s work even more impressive.
In that show there wasn’t any explicit sense that each person was a character. It was a very personal, autobiographical kind of context each of these solos. So there’s actually Lesta picking up, as we were kind of speaking to each of the artists, and Lesta was there. Lesta picked up. And actually, don’t you think they all have quite different personalities, and they have different ways of manifesting in the space. Maybe we can start to assign certain characteristics in the way that you’re even describing them and the tone of voice you’re using, which was really insightful given that this is not the kind of work necessarily that you would choose to see or like choose to enjoy.

Lesta:
Otherwise, no, no. I mean, you know, also there was some sort of difficulties in the space as well. So, I was able to suggest things like, just generally in the actual building itself, because of my architectural background, but also in the space itself.

I think it helped anybody that else would like to come see it actually. You know, in terms of watching Dance, I used to love watching dance performances all the time after my site is progressive, basically, but I watch, I don’t really like watching things now, just because it’s, it’s, it’s not that accessible. And dance specifically is not very accessible, but it is becoming more so because of different. Methodologies. And so it’s actually getting more joyful to be able to go see these things. I think a lot of vision impaired people feel like that, like, you know, dance is just not an art form they can enter into or have a look at. But because it’s being done in this sort of experimental way, I think that’s very appropriate and like quite useful.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
great to hear. That’s great, especially coming from you Lesta, because you keep saying you’re grumpy.

I’m saying you’re not grumpy.

Shivaangee:
Though, I love that we using grumpy as like a euphemism.

Lesta:
It’s a very British word.

— Transition

TR:
I’m excited for SoundScribe. They recognize what’s really important to them. Like , community!

Elaine:
I don’t think we’re looking to explode in numbers at all. I really like the kind of intimacy of our collaboration.
There are many people who we collaborate with that people won’t necessarily know about.
There are so many sound engineers that we work with, ESL interpreters, other consultants. It’s such a beautiful network.

TR:
The importance of going beyond the work and supporting one another.

Elaine:
Lesta’s taking us out jazz dancing, which I’m very excited about.

Shivaangee:
Lesta is an incredible jazz dancer, yeah, so we can’t wait to, like, experience Leicester in that capacity as well.

Lesta
Oh I hyped up too much.

TR in conversation with SoundScribe:
I have a feeling Lesta is going to show and prove.

TR:
The value in dreaming.

Elaine:
My dream would be to bring on another narrator, maybe, or scripter who is blind?

TR:
The importance of equity.

Elaine:
I think there needs To be an industry shift.
For example, with theaters, they tend to work with the same people.
The way that I personally moved into that sector was through recommendations from other people who were working in those theaters basically and couldn’t do a job, and then passed it on.

It is definitely quite cliquey in the UK. I don’t think that venues will really take a risk on a new person unless they come with a recommendation, and those recommendations are from mostly white, middle class women.
I think there’s a bit of gatekeeping in the industry, even when people are trained, even when you have a whole cohort, there could be like 20 of us that are all trained and ready to go, then the door is kind of already shut.

I feel like no one really wants to kind of admit that, because then you have to give up work. It’s a hard economy, people are scared.
They don’t want to do that.

TR:
It doesn’t have to be just a dream.

(Elaine:
I would love for us to just get a bunch of funding and train some people. And also join forces with a venue so that we are guaranteed we are the in house audio describers, and now we’re going to bring in seven different people who are all going to get to have a go at what you’re describing, that to me would be like, Yeah, that’ll be a future goal.

We’ve got many plans, Thomas, we’ve got plans!

Shivaangee:
I think the discourse is also important. I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but in the UK, there’s just so much tiptoeing around race. People will not talk about it unless you bring it up.
It’s really important just to keep naming that, just to keep bringing white people’s attention to race.

Are you employing anybody else in your creative team that’s not white?
Often we are the only people on the wide creative team that are global majority.
and sadly, it’s kind of important to keep naming it for people so that they are aware of the subjectivities they’re bringing into the work and who they’re giving opportunities too.

TR:
And finally, recognizing the importance of gratitude.

Elaine:
I feel really, really lucky to be in this space.

TR:
I couldn’t let the conversation end without asking Lesta, about her thoughts on some current AD topics.

I really liked her perspective on how TTS further reduces that human connection and how important that is especially after vision loss.

Lesta:
When you start to lose your sight, you start to lose not just your sight, but the sociability associated with it, the connection to other humans, looking at each other, knowing where everyone knows and everything, and not being able to maybe go out as much or do stuff as you wanted to you used to, especially those who weren’t born blind. So the connection to a human is really desirable. And you know, going to shows and having a sort of live audio description or like someone speaking, you start to get that kind of connection. Because when you actually go to a show as a sighted person, you go to a show live because you want to be connected to, say, the dancer or the art, the actor in front of you. Otherwise you just watch it on TV.

TR:
Even the technology of closed audio description can affect that connection for Lesta.

Lesta:
When I wear a headset, it just cuts out my ability to understand the background noise and the footsteps of the dances, the sound of wind as they move past. These are the things that you lose that are like humanistic so I tend to veer away from technology.
in terms of audio description, I prefer to be present in the space.

TR:
And, on the subject of authentic representation in AD narration?

Lesta:
Well, that is an interesting topic, isn’t it?

If you go back again to the fact that it’s a performance, I would say that it’s a reflection of the art form. So it has to be appropriate and relevant, it’s performative. It’s not just like a service at the end where you’re just saying a load of stuff that’s describing the whole art piece.

TR:
While she is all in for cultural appropriate casting, she identifies the related problem faced by narrators of color in audio description.

Lesta:
And actually, every profession under the sun, not just audio description.

A person of color, is quite often put in a box, pigeonholing in the UK, so you only do these types of jobs. I feel like that with race, but I also feel like that with my visual impairment. Like, it’s intersectional as well, right?

A person of color or a person who is disabled can work in these specific type of fields, where it’s culturally competent and appropriate, but also can work in other aspects of everything. So Elaine can go and do her Marvel show. That’s totally cool like if she wanted to, because the thing is, is that it’s about like ability as well. These two women are great audio describers. It’s not like there’s nothing to do with their ethnicity or the way they look, it’s just their skill level. So they should be appreciated for that.

TR:
Well, I can tell you I appreciate Elaine, Lesta and Shivaangee… SoundScribe!

If you’re in the UK and want to work with SoundScribe or just let them know you think they’re dope, head on over to there website

SoundScribe.co.Uk.

TR in Conversation with SoundScribe:
Well, Elaine, you already know Lesta Shiv after every episode, for those who come onto the podcast and they share their information, they share their time and share with the family, I gotta let y’all know that you’re now an official part of the Reid My Mind Radio Family!

Shivaangee:
Thank you so much for inviting us into this conversation. It was a privilege.

TR:
I really enjoyed that conversation.

I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more from SoundScribe in the future. They’re doing cool stuff and our philosophies are aligned.

Anti racist, anti ableist… anti hate!

You can’t say you want the world to be those things without being intentional. So what are you doing in your space?

Let me know!

Hit me up at ReidMyMindRadio@gmail.com.

I hope you all will continue rocking with Reid My Mind Radio and subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

You know, we have transcripts and more over at ReidMyMind.com.

Only one way to get there…
I’m mean, you can take a car and put your luggage in the boot, take the tube, or ride the lift to the top floor,
but you’ll still need to spell it right….

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 Outro

Peace!

Hide the transcript

TR:

Reid My Mind Radio Family!

Before we get into this latest episode, I need your help.
I want to take Reid My Mind Radio to the next level,
that’s making it a sustainable venture.
But I need to know more about you, the listener.
I’d really appreciate if you could take a few moments to fill out
a quick survey. Just go to ReidMyMind.com and hit the link that says , hmm, what should I call it?… Survey!

— Pulsating Swoosh Transition sound

Welcome, to another installment of Reid My Mind Radio. i’m your host Thomas Reid and thank you for joining me.

In this second to last installment of the Flipping the Script on Audio Description series, we’re discussing topics related to sex.
— Music begins, a slow, sentuous R&B track…

I’m not saying it’s X rated, but I am saying its for the Blind, the grown and yes, (– An orgasmic “Yes” from “When Harry Met Sally”) the sexy!

You don’t actually have to be Blind or even consider yourself sexy, but I do want you to know that in this episode, we say some words, discuss and suggest some things.

— A woman’s orgasmic moan. From “When Harry Met Sally”

Let’s get it on!
— Reid My Mind Theme Music

— A scene from Fifty Shades of Gray where a man is undressing a woman… being described

TR in Conversation with Pratik:
I think it was December of 2020. Do you remember?

Pratik:

I kind of generally remember the, the gist of what I was tweeting out. I remember watching a Netflix show. And there were a couple of sex scenes in it. And the narrator of the audio described content, basically used the same phrase again and again. They kiss passionately, they kiss passionately, they kiss passionately

Even though from the context you can tell that there was some other things going on. And I found that to be a bit stale.

TR:

This is Pratik Patel.

Pratik:

I am a 43 year old Asian cisgender Male. I have someone medium length, dark hair, brown skin. I’m five, eight. And on the thin side these days.

I own a small business that deals with digital accessibility in different products, websites, applications, as well as working with companies and in different organizations on integrating people with disabilities in their employment contexts.

TR:

Access, employment, hell yes, that’s grown and sexy!

Sex scenes in film and television have become way more prevalent especially with providers like HBO, Netflix and others who
are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable on screen.
So what does that mean for Audio Description consumers?

Pratik:
I found a significant gap in what should be conveyed while describing a sex scene, and what was conveyed while describing a sex scene perhaps because it was the narrator not being comfortable. Or rather, the idea that disabled people or Blind people don’t really need description, even though, that may not be stated outright, it’s an idea that can still persist in people’s minds.

TR:

Hey, come in close, I have a secret to share with you. Blind people, Disabled people are sexual.
But, let’s take our time here and explore that gap.

Pratik:

I was looking at a review of a movie that I had just watched basic instinct 2, it had come out in 2005 2006. It had descriptions in the UK, and that was how I first encountered it.

It has quite a bit of sexual content in it.

There’s this scene between the main female character Catherine, played by Sharon Stone. And the main male character was a psychiatrist providing her therapy.

In one of the scenes, she is speaking to her therapist, and she knows that the therapist is attracted to her.

TR:

A highly sexual being, Stone’s character that is, is dressed in a short skirt.

— Audio from scene in Basic Instinct 2:
AD Narrator:
“She glances over her shoulder with a smoldering predatory expression, then drags the chair into the middle of the room. She straddles the chair with the with the back in front of her and hoists her dress up revealing her thighs.”

Sharon Stone Character:

“When you think about fucking me and I know you do…”

TR in Conversation with Pratik: 10:12
So she’s sitting with her legs open.

Pratik:10:16
Yes.

She has this entire monologue with a therapist. And in the background, you hear a sound, a rhythmic sound.

— Sample from the scene plays in the background.

And at the end of the scene, the narrator says…

— From Basic Instinct 2 AD Narrator:
“Suddenly, she stops touching herself.”

Pratik:

In some ways, the US version is even worse, because it doesn’t even tell you that she was touching herself.

In some cases, when the scene is moving really fast, and there isn’t enough time between dialog, I can understand that you leave out some information.
But it’s not the case in this and other shows or movies that I’ve seen. There’s plenty of gap.

TR in Conversation with Pratik:
no pun intended with the gap. Sorry.

(TR & Pratik share a silly laugh)

TR:

Ok, I never said I was grown!

Maybe you have experienced watching a film with a sighted person who can easily point out these gaps.
That’s the difference between what’s taking place on screen and what’s being described.

Pratik:

It brings up multiple points not only not having that information, but the context the artistic expression of that scene, you know, sometimes sex is sex is sex, but other times especially in movies like that sex is used for effect right? And not describing that is a bit of a travesty. I think.

— Music begins, a slow, sentuous Hip Hop groove

TR:

Let’s flip this, and explore from another angle.

Bojana:

I feel so often, when I’m reading alt text there isn’t much joy or delight. When there could be.

I have started to use Alt Text as Poetry as a lens to look at everything else that I’m engaging in.

TR:

That’s artis , Bojana Coklyat.
One half of Alt Text as Poetry,
who focus on getting people to think creatively when it comes to descriptions and access in general.

Fellow artist Shannon Finnegan makes up the other half of this dynamic duo.

Shannon:

We talk a lot about this idea of attention to language and just being aware and intentional about what the tone of the writing is, or what words are you using, jargon or slang.
Thinking about how that tone relates to the tone of the material or the image?
Trying out different things and learning from each other and not defaulting to one way of writing.

Some people have an association with poetry as super flowery language or kind of inaccessible. We don’t mean poetry in that sense. Access is at the core.
It’s more about bringing an intentional and creative mindset to it rather than writing a sonnet.

TR:

Shout out to Reid My Mind Radio alumni and family member, Cathy Kudlick who pointed me to Alt Text as Poetry.

The two each bring valuable perspective to this subject.
Bojana herself is a person living with low vision.

Bojana:

I am also a project manager at the museum of Art and Culture Access Consortium.
I am a white woman with short brown hair cut into a bob. I’m wearing a black cardigan. A red shirt with white polka dots behind me is a boring tan wall.
I use she her pronouns.

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon: 01:17
Shannon?

Shannon:

I am disabled, but my disability is physical. So it mostly affects my kind of walking and movement. I’m sighted which I think is important to clarify in the context of Alt Text as Poetry that I approach this material in terms of cross disability solidarity.
I am a white person with short hair. I’m in my studio. So I’m in the middle of a big art project. So I’m dressed for comfort.
I use they them pronouns.

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon:
You two superheroes, Tell me about the origin story of Alt Text as Poetry?

Bojana:

I love it. So can we make some outfits? I want some outfits.

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon:

Yeh, you should. And you have to describe them! (laughs)
Bojana:

Oh, yes, exactly. And they have to be tactile…

I was working on my master’s focusing on disability studies and art administration. Kevin Gotkin was trying to organize something around disability nightlife. So I went to that event. Me and Shannon, chit chatted a little bit. And we connected from there.

Shannon:

I was a resident at a place called IBEAM, that focuses on like, artists thinking about technology, and had just started formulating this idea of Alt Text as Poetry and felt like Bojana had a lot to add to the project.

We kind of came to this idea of Alt Text as Poetry, in contrast to the compliance oriented way of thinking about access generally, and certainly alt text that feels very dry and perfunctory and kind of like minimum effort and really doesn’t feel engaging or truly welcoming.
— Music ends

We started talking about this project as a way of creating time and space for conversation about text and image description. Not coming to it with like, Oh, we know all the answers about how to write the best image description, but much more like, wow, there’s a lot of questions and a lot of interesting things that come up in this process. And it would really be great to hear from other people.

Bojana:
I don’t have anything as exciting as like, you know, being exposed to gamma radiation and giving us Alt Text powers.

TR:

Well, we’ll see some of that power in description. Whether alt text or AD.

For now, Bojana shares some of her experience with what she describes as a sexy , romantic period drama, Bridgerton.

Bojana:

They never mentioned nudity. The love scenes they never really described very sexily.

I think it was like the final movie moment where the Duke and I can’t remember his love interest name, but they’re finally together in bed. And like, we’ve been waiting for this for how many episodes …
The audio describer is like , and the Duke is thrusting, repeatedly. Staying thrusting. And it was like the most detached, non sexy description of two people who have been so intensely attracted to each other. And I will never forget it.

Pratik:
I find that describers aren’t always conveying the context when it comes to describing sex scenes.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy. Terrible movie by the way, and terrible set of books. The only one I saw was the first one. I saw the UK version, I didn’t compare it to the US. But mostly the describer does a fantastic job of conveying the information of the movie, the context, and the sex scenes. But I found that the narrator was a bit shy. It felt like she was cringing when describing the scenes.

TR:

I could imagine the narrators comfort level could affect some Blind consumers.

Pratik, who was involved with early advocacy for the CVAA,
recognizes the difference between the quality of the movie and that of the audio description.

But what other aspects impact a viewer?

TR in Conversation with Pratik:

Let’s say it was really good description, would it make a difference for you to get that description from a man or a woman?
Pratik:

That’s a good question. I don’t think so. The accent does make a difference though.

For me, I find the UK accent to be highly sexy, especially female UK accents.

TR in Conversation with Pratik:

What about the texture of the voice? You know, tone?

Pratik:

The tone, ? Yeah.
TR in Conversation with Pratik:

So it does make a difference. So you wouldn’t want Roseanne Barr? (Laughs…)

Pratik:

No. Okay. Some people might find that sexy.
TR in Conversation with Pratik:

Woooo!!
Okay, no judgment!
Pratik:

When we talk about quality, I’m talking more about the content itself. Not the person delivering it. That’s highly subjective.

TR:

This is consistent with what we say, the most important piece of audio description is the writing.

Pratik:

What do you include in the kind of detail of two naked people that could get you the same context, that can give you the same information that’s being conveyed to the sighted people.

TR:
Shannon has some thoughts on this.

Shannon:

What’s wild to me is I have experienced very sexy descriptions in books. Right now I’ve been listening to the audio book, Red, White and Royal Blue, which is like a romance novel. And it’s extremely sexy.

Going back to the bridgerton example. It was a book that was adapted into a TV show and I haven’t read the books, but I was actually thinking recently it would be interesting to do that.

I’m sure there’s licensing and copyright issues around why maybe some of that language couldn’t be brought into the audio description, but how cool if that could be mixed in?

TR:

So we do have examples of language to fill the gap!

Shannon:

It’s just somehow that’s not when it comes to it as an access practice. There’s a different frame or something. I think for me, it also pushes up against this thing of like, a kind of infantilization of disabled people that always feels very dehumanizing to me.
Bojana:

Just remembering something in a book by Georgina Klieg, in “More Than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art.” She was talking about a movie, I can’t remember what it was called.

TR:

The book is available on BARD and I’ll link to it on Bookshare on this episode’s blog post.
The movie is “The Sessions” and during a love scene, Helen Hunt’s character takes off her clothes.

Bojana:
I think it says she takes off her clothes, but does not describe her naked body at all, when other things have been described.

I think it’s the infantilization. And also the stigma attached that, oh, why would Blind people be interested in that. They’re not thinking about sex. That’s not something we should be talking about, maybe it could be offensive.

I think sighted people assume that human beings can only take in information through their eyes, and ears, and they forget about the other senses, and how important those are.

There’s real value in not only recognizing the ways we take in information but also all the ways we communicate.

Shannon:

Podcasts or books or literature or hearing from a friend about something they saw on vacation or things like that, like description is really all around us. And somehow all of that creative energy isn’t always getting there when it’s specifically around access.

— Music begins, a bass heavy, pulsating groove

Pratik:

When we talk about sexuality, there’s such variation in people’s preferences in terms of what they practice and in terms of what they’re attracted to, that it’s hard for us to say, this is what we should describe first. But I think the best way for us to look at and the best way for us to think about it is to look at different communities, sex positive communities, and to advocate for getting more description from individuals who posted and just different groups. For example, I know that a lot of kink communities tend to be pretty aware of disability issues. And when you point it out, they’ll start to think about how to make those spaces accessible.

Danielle:

Hi. I’m Danielle Montour. I am 24. I work primarily in accessibility and sex education. I’m getting into the kink education space as well.

TR:

Danielle and I share something in common.

Danielle:

I was born with bilateral retinoblastoma. I do not have any eyes anymore.

Let’s see, image description.

So right now I’m probably a little bit lighter than olive. So I have a warmer undertone type of skin. I am relatively petite. But I have a curvy build. I have hazel eyes, I have hair that goes almost to my waist, but it’s about to be cut by the end of the week. So it’s only going to be a little bit above my shoulders.

I am wearing a very, very bright smile. And my hazel eyes are kind of crinkled up the corners because my smiles are often big enough that my eyes do that.

TR:

Warm undertones, eyes that crinkle up on the sides,
she began exploring visual concepts through conversations with sighted friends who happened to be artist.
Learning the importance of detail.

Danielle:

What does my hair look like? What facial features are most noticeable? What do you see when you look at me first?

Does something I’m wearing bring out particular features.

I’ve tried to think of all the different pieces of information that sighted folks would get. And honestly, my image descriptions can be a paragraph long sometimes because I’m just trying to put all of the information that I would have possibly wanted to know about the picture. And if I want to know I’m sure somebody else might want to know, and if they don’t, they can just keep going.

TR:
Sharing these descriptions can be infectious.

Bojana:
So I make sure I have it in alt text and in the caption, so everybody can see the image description.

Sometimes I’ll see my friends start to right image descriptions.

Whoa, where’d you learn that?
I learned that from you.

At least people on my Instagram or my Facebook feed start to see examples of it and kind of reflect it back.

Shannon:

Some friends and colleagues, john Harmon and Molly Joyce did a dance and music performance and they had a director of audio description. It was Andy Slater, who’s a Blind artist and writer.

Putting someone who’s blind or low vision, in charge of that creative process makes a lot of sense in terms of setting the tone, and kind of making the plan and thinking about what the approach to it is going to be.

— Music ends – smakcs into…
— Audio from Radical Visibility Collective

TR:
Marginalized communities are producing progressive examples of audio description
weaved into performances. And even keeping it grown and sexy.

Shannon:
actually, I thought of a really good example. The performance by radical visibility collective. It’s put on by three people, it’s also related to queer and crip nightlife and, and the audio description is in music, and it is so fun. It really has that feeling of a dance party of the kind of ways that people are showing off on the dance floor. For me that was a kind of experience where I was like, Oh, right, okay, like this can be really fun, really sexy, very much in the same feeling of the performance in general.

TR:
Earlier in our conversation, Bojana mentioned an accessible Cabaret on a barge in Brooklyn.
I was intrigued and had to ask for more because parties and night life, that can be sexy!

— Audio from Radical Visibility Collective ends and smacks into…
— Music begins, a thumping club dance track…

Bojana:

I’m really glad you asked.

There was music, poetry being read, everything there was done with access. So everybody was wearing a mask.
There were non alcoholic beverages available. It was a very like relaxed environment.

It was just a way of being together in a space that would not just like, oh, it had a ramp or like a no barrier to entry. But there’s also the attitudes. So often you can go into a place that might be, quote unquote accessible as far as like the built environment, but you get there and you feel like, Oh, this person is acting a certain kind of way, because I’m disabled, and they’re not.

Shannon:

Our friend and colleague Kevin Gotkin has been doing a lot of research and planning around disability nightlife and also planning remote parties that happened over zoom, where there’s a DJ set, and there’s audio description available.

There’s sound description, so thinking about captioning, but also thinking about someone who’s describing the feel of the song that’s on.

TR:

So what are the implications of all this sexy access?

Danielle:

It kind of puts out a statement that our access matters. And it really kind of changed my perspective and thinking.

Now I’m kind of someone who is always going on and on about image descriptions and the art that can be involved in image descriptions.

I’m always asking blind people, why are you not describing your images at all, they will post images with no description.

It’s just a conversation that we have to continue having. And just recognizing that a lot of folks are where I was several years ago, in terms of audio description.

TR:

Danielle learned how she could benefit from accessing this visual information.

Danielle:

I started being able to kind of understand, like the facial expressions and kind of the silent things that were happening with the mood of the room

I just ended up finding that I had so much access to things. I didn’t realize that I could ask people about the colors of the decorations in the room, or how exactly somebody space looked, or how their face would pinch before they felt really ill. I didn’t know.

It kind of started setting me on equal footing with my sighted peers who had access to all these things for so long

TR:

Access to things like sexy advertisements that can let’s say arouse one’s interest.

Bojana:

As a person with low vision, who never has driven and never will,, I don’t think about how cars look, I don’t think about the design of cars.

I read this description of this one car, feline, like a panther about to strike. I was fascinated because the picture was right there. And they weren’t writing this description for access, they were writing this description to enhance the image or in order to draw people in.

— Sound of a Bugatti engine roaring like a feline…

I looked at the other descriptions of cars, and it wasn’t anywhere near as delicious.

I want to go to a car museum now. Like, let me touch your cars.

TR:

Imagine if online descriptions of clothes, shoes and other products were as sexy or captivating. Cha ching!

The need for access to sexual related content actually has implications that begin earlier in life.

TR in Conversation with Pratik:
What was your experience? If you care to talk about with sex education growing up? Was that something that you felt was accessible to you?

Pratik:
No. It wasn’t accessible.

I had a couple of good teachers in high school who were good enough to describe the content, but it still wasn’t enough.

And the book we were using for sex ed wasn’t brailled In fact, I think there are a bunch of copy pages. They played a couple of videos not accessible. You know, the typical banana video but I think the most difficult thing about that course was Male and female anatomy and what discussions that were around different anatomical parts.

I found that part to be missing in my education. It wasn’t until later in life when I started exploring that I figured things out. That’s a major problem in our current education system. blind students don’t have enough information.

Danielle:

I did not learn a lot in my sex education in school, I learned a lot from books. I got one when I was eight, and one when I was 10.
I was the one telling people what pelvic exams were when I was eight, because they were in a book that I read. It’s called, it’s perfectly normal and it was in Braille. I think the NBP,national Braille press, Brailed it.
Pratik:35:58
The male teacher was not comfortable having that conversation. I had a female teacher who did a health and wellness course, that was somewhat different than your normal health course with sex ed attached to it. She was a student teacher, young hip teacher, she was far more comfortable talking about sex. Not only generally to students, but she actually spent some time with me. Outside the course, with the itinerant teacher, working with me to talk about some sex ed issues.

And it only happened because I was persistent enough to ask questions. Not all students are comfortable enough to do that.

Danielle:

I didn’t get to learn a lot about 3d example of anatomy until I was out of my own house, even then, I only knew mine, until I started my phase of getting around and experiencing other bodies. And that’s when I learned a lot about what penises and vaginas look like.

I think it’s really healthy for people to have an idea of what different vaginas and penises look like, even as children because sighted kids get to see it.

I don’t think that we have to single out blind kids by giving them really super extended image descriptions or models that the sighted kids don’t get, I think we can actually give everybody access to those models and let everybody experience them.

And that sets the stage for really important access expectations for everything else later on, too, because kids are really good at learning that stuff. It’s the adults who are shitty at it.

Pratik:38:25

I don’t think we should be shy as a community using sex toys to demonstrate different things to blind students. There are some realistic models available.

TR in Conversation with Pratik: 38:57
Wow. If the male teacher was just nervous about having a conversation with you? (Laughing….)

Pratik:
(…Laughing) I can just imagine,.

Communities and parents have a role to play in this as well. And oftentimes, I think that’s where a lot of suppression comes in. Parents don’t see their children as having desires. Wanting sex. But I think the more we accept that disabled people are sexual beings, the better it is.

Danielle:
It’s called blind positive sex ed, the community group that I work in. They talk a lot about making realistic models.

Right now it’s more about genitalia. So different states of vaginas and penises, a flaccid penis, circumcised uncircumcised . Vaginally, we have some where it has been subjected to genital mutilation. All of these different things that we really have to think about.

That’s the beauty of models, just like the audio and image descriptions they can convey so many different points.

TR:

Points that go beyond the individual.

Danielle:
I work a lot in talking about consent, and consent in terms of sexuality and kink. All of these things I learned because I’ve had so many descriptions being thrown at me that I get to enjoy the art, but the person who described it does not belong to me and I have no ownership of them or their time.

I think conversations around sexuality and just sex and just all the raunchy things like everything, literally everything, talk about what a money shot is talk about what it looks like when somebody squirts talk about all these things because sighted people have access to that stuff, if they want it, blind folks don’t.

TR:

Of course, it’s more than access.
Danielle:

I think particularly in blind communities, access to this information is so new that there’s not a lot of examples of us conducting ourselves with respect in these ways. I might be the first rather sensual image description that a blind person has ever seen. Meanwhile, most sighted people I know, have seen 10s, hundreds 1000s of sensual pictures. And they’ve had a lot more practice having to try or not try to conduct themselves with some decorum whenever they see those pictures. So I think that’s all part of consent education, and what we talk about when we start opening up equal access to a lot of this information.

My intention is not to lambaste the blind community and be like, they’re all terrible for this and nobody else because like, we all know, sighted folks are just as bad with consent.

boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

Bojana:
People don’t understand boundaries, they think it’s out there and it’s there, right? Or their privilege to just comment on whatever they want to comment on.
People feel more anonymous online and they can do these things.

It’s hard to say where the boundary should be for people who are commenting.

If somebody wants to write a sexy and grown description, they should have that. Absolutely.
I think like anything with the internet you kind of curate it.

Try something out you see if that works and maybe you get a response you don’t want you kind of try to peel it back and edit yourself.

I’m thinking about how I describe myself
if there’s a picture of me and maybe it has some cleavage I’m probably won’t for that very reason. I don’t want to signal something.
I don’t know

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon: 54:39
So you would leave it out of the description? You’re censoring blind people. (Laughing…)

Bojana:
Oh, no. Strike that Thomas!

I feel like I’m reinforcing the sexiness of it. Just by writing it by noting it by marking it.
Shannon:
This gets to such an important topic in image description, there is always this prioritization and filtering, that happens, because you’re never gonna describe every single thing.
So you’re choosing certain things. There can be a mismatch, where it’s the thing that’s most important to me about sharing the photo, there may be something that really stands out to someone else about it, but I might gloss over that.

This also comes up against some issues around consent and description.

You’re describing an image of yourself, you get to make a choice about what parts of your body and how you want to name them and what you feel comfortable doing and what you feel you don’t. Certainly if you’re describing someone else, thinking about consent and that situation. If you know them, checking in with them about how they want to be described, or researching online about language they used to describe themselves.

I think especially for marginalized people, there is a potential for harm there.
Going back to boundaries or crossing a boundary and that of course, is this like Delicate Balance with like, not withholding information or like hiding something or not naming it because of a describers discomfort or unease. But also, being aware that there can be like power imbalances like talking about someone’s cleavage may make them feel vulnerable in a way that they shouldn’t have to be. Right.

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon: 1:00:27
Bojana when you said strike that Thomas we use, were you serious?

Bojana:
No. I’m just joking, joking around.

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon:

I thought so. But I just want to make sure.

Bojana:
thanks for checking.
TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon:
Yeah, absolutely. Get your consent. Cool.
(“consent” echoes for emphasis and transition)

TR:
sex education, understanding how to fit in society,
I’m telling you, Alt text, , Audio Description is more than entertainment. That access goes deep.

Danielle:
I never , in my image descriptions describe myself as an indigenous white woman. I don’t know what that means.
Often my skin tone is not the same shade year round. At its widest point, it is an olive tone. At its darkest. It’s many, many, many shades darker.

Sometimes I’ll notice when my skin gets darker, how I’m treated. Sometimes it’s just like, who talks to me when I’m in public. White women in general really will approach me a lot. I noticed that they start avoiding me the darker my skin gets. When I’ve gone to other places like Florida I will have folks start speaking Spanish to me thinking I am Latina.

TR:

Body and facial features are tied to identity. The implications aren’t just how we’re viewed in society.

Danielle:
As a disabled person, my body was always public property for people to make remarks on. In the summer, it got so much worse, and people would make so many jokes about my skin, and what I looked like, and my body shape and everything. And I thought, for the longest time I thought it was because I was showing more skin, and that I was just genuinely ugly. I did not realize that my skin was getting darker and darker and darker, the longer I spent outside.

Because I was on my mom’s side, primarily white, my father’s side wasn’t really in the picture all that much. I am by far the darkest in my family. There were just a lot of jokes made about that, even in passing, whether it was by my family members, or just by people around me. They would always make remarks about how dark I was.

It’s a whole big thing that I’m still working through, honestly, in terms of my racial identity.

Shannon:
I went to this audio description workshop that was put on by a UK organization called Whiplash. And they were talking a little bit about how self description can fall a little bit heavier on marginalized people, marginalized in various ways.

I felt that a little bit around gender identity, I’ve had like a shifting understanding of my gender and it’s hard to put that into words or to kind of like process that or update that in real time. It also has been really helpful to think about what my gender presentation is versus how my gender feels.

— Music Begins, A sexy , smooth melodic Hip Hop track
TR:

Alt Text as poetry offers some great resources for those interested in stepping up their description game, including workshops.
Shannon:

We basically get together with small groups of people, talk to them about what alt text is and talk about this idea of Alt Text as Poetry and then practice together.

And then we’ve also created a workbook, a self guided version of the workshop. And we also now have a blog as part of the project called alt text study club, where we gather interesting examples of alt text, again, in that spirit of learning from other people and thinking about different approaches or ways of writing.

Bojana:

One of the things in the workshops that I love, is just when people have the chance to share.
Maybe we’re talking all about the same image. And people have so many different perspectives.
Just giving people a chance to share and learn from each other, I think is just one of the more beneficial parts of the workshop.

People sometimes get so caught up in writing text correctly and perfectly, instead of just doing the best they can and having some fun with it and adding a creative flair. I think that’s something that we also talk about and encourage.

TR:

So whether we’re talking about describing love scenes in film, subjective images that we deem sexy like
those featuring the curves of a woman’s body to those of a stylish sports car, having fun and being creative is a great place to start. Who knows where it will take you.

Bojana:
Thomas, if all of a sudden, all my decisions get a lot sexier. She’s talking about cleavage and… (Laughing)

TR in Conversation with Bojana/Shannon: 57:00
Just point them to this episode. (Laughing…)

Bojana:

That’s the Grown & Sexy episode.

TR:

Big shout out to my grown and sexy guests;
Alt Text as Poetry, that’s the dynamic duo of :
Bojana, who you can find on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Bojana:
at bojana Coklyat. That’s B as in boy, O J A N AC O K L Y A T as in Tom.

TR:
Shannon!
Shannon:
at Shan S H A N and then my last name, Finnegan F I N E G A N. So that’s for both Instagram and Twitter.

TR:

Danielle

Danielle:
I’m Danielle Montour on Facebook. I think i’s still Can’tC4Shit on Instagram
Can’t, letter C, number 4, shit…

TR:
You’re funny for that one Danielle!

And Pratik Patel is on Twitter @PPatel

Pratik:
Spelling it out… PPatel

TR:
I need you all to understand, you are each official members of the Reid My Mind Radio family!
— Air horn

Subscribe wherever you get podcasts and join the family.
We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.
I’ll let you in on a family thing…
That’s R to the E I D…
— Sample “D! And that’s me in the place to be!” Slick Rick

TR:
Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Outro
Peace!

Hide the transcript

TR:

Welcome back to the podcast featuring essays of compelling people
impacted by Blindness and Disability.
it’s called Reid My Mind Radio!

Every now and then, I include some of my personal experiences as a man adjusting to becoming Blind as an adult.

I’m Thomas Reid, producer and host of this here podcast
living up to the claim of making blindness sound funky!

I’m not only referring to the actual sound, but I’m talking about the energy.
It’s positive, yet real and always upbeat. Funky is my way of challenging how you the listener may
think a podcast geared to those adjusting to blindness is supposed to sound.
Should it sound sanitized, institutional? Not here it won’t.

So if you’re riding with the Reid My Mind Radio family well then you must be funky too!

On the podcast today…

Audio: “Dance”

Audio: Reid My Mind Radio Intro

“Once you start asking; how does your body move? How does it communicate movement? Movement is a rigorous and tough beautiful way of communicating. We owe it to ourselves and to our audiences to find, nurture and develop the greatest range of nuance in physical communication that we can. It’s an amazing kind of vocabulary.”, Alice Sheppard

TR:

Today we’re exploring some of that vocabulary with Dancer and Choreographer, Alice Sheppard. She’s also the founding Director of Kinetic Light;

AS:

Which is an ensemble of disabled artists making immersive dance experiences.

[TR in conversation with AS:]

Tell me a little bit about your first experience with dance.

AS:

I was a Musician, an Orchestral Pit Musician. Dancers were just simply the things above me on the stage pounding away, being late, needing the music to go slower, needing the music to go faster. (Laughs) I didn’t understand much about the art form . Dance was not something that my family had access to or I would have had access to even try. Dance just wasn’t there.

TR:

Eventually, She’d gain that access but the steps to becoming a dancer were far from choreographed.

[TR in conversation with AS:]

My understanding is that you became a professor… Yes?

AS:

Yes!

[TR in conversation with AS:]

(Laughing…) AS:

Laughing…

[TR in conversation with AS:] I just want to make sure the internet is correct.

AS:

the internet… in this case the internet is correct! Laughs…

TR:

A professor of Medieval Studies to be exact.

in 2004, Alice saw a performance by a disabled dancer.

AAS:

I didn’t really know what to expect. I was worried it was going to be cringe worthy and it wasn’t.

It was, … amazing! It was smart. It was political. It was sour. It was bitter. It was funny. It was tender, loving and joyful. It was the fullest expression of what you can hope for a body and mind and a heart. It grabbed me. It transported me and transformed me in ways I had not imagined possible.

TR:

Following the performance , Alice had a conversation with the dancer, Homer Avila.

AS:

We were talking about Disability and art and aesthetics and integrity and how you could work from a position of wholeness. He had an amputation to his leg, but he wasn’t saying things like he’s working from a deficit position, he was just working with the body that he had and reforming the art around his body. I was all into this because it was in line with what I was reading and thinking and writing about as a professor.

At the end of the evening he had issued a dare to me and a couple of other people who were hanging out

TR:

The dare?

Take a dance class.

AS:

I said yes because you know when you’re drinking you say yes to a whole pile of things.

[TR in conversation with AS:] Laughing…

AS:

Yeh, maybe this should be a lesson in bad alcohol. Don’t drink!

[TR in conversation with AS:]

Laughing… Maybe it’s good though because it seems like it worked out for you.

AS:

Yeh, yeh! (Laughing)

[TR in conversation with AS:] Not that I’m promoting alcohol. Laughs…

AS:

Laughs…

TR:

Sadly, that was Avila’s last performance. He passed away six weeks later.

AS:

I really felt like I had to honor that dare.

TR:

Finding a dance class doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, but it took Alice some time to find a school that would actually teach her. Instead she received responses like;

AS:

Well I don’t really know how to teach you or you can just be over there and maybe you can figure something out or make something up.

I never actually got to be in the dance class.

TR:

One school even had security post up outside of the class. We’re still trying to figure that one out!

I personally have never seen dance outside of that performed by someone with full use of their legs. So I asked Alice to describe how she does it.

AS:

Mostly in a manual wheelchair. Sometimes on crutches and some of my work is actually being done in a wheel chair with crutches on my arms as well.

[TR in conversation with AS:]

So tell me what does that look like?

AS:

If you can imagine a pair of manual crutches with rings like the European Lofstrand forearm crutches, they just have hoops at the top so you can hang them off your arms. I made them too short to stand up on, but long enough to be able to push my wheelchair like ski’s. Then I have these huge like 9 feet long, I can reach all the way up to the ceiling up to 11 1/2 feet and 9 feet wide. it’s just the incredible feeling of this huge wingspan and you can whirl those crutches. You can turn like nothing on earth, you just whirl them. Because they’re so wide they give you this incredible balance. It’s awesome! (Laughs…)

[TR in conversation with AS:]

Wow!

You’re going between the chair and the floor sometimes too, right?

AS:

Oh yeh! We use the floor in our chairs. We wear straps so the chairs come with us and we come with the chair. And then we can dive to the floor and roll and do all kinds of things on the floor. Sometimes we’re on the floor without our wheelchair.
It’s an amazing kind of vocabulary. I think once you start asking how does your body move. How does it communicate in movement? Movement is a rigorous and tough and beautiful way of communicating. We owe it to ourselves and to our audiences to find, nurture and develop the greatest range of nuance in physical communication that we can.

TR:

Eventually, Alice found her way to the Access Dance Company in Oakland California, where she took her first physically integrated dance class.

[TR in conversation with AS:] What was the experience like for you?

AS:

No one has ever quite asked me this before. Give me a moment to actually tell you the truth of it.

It was a sense of being at the beginning of something. Something I knew I couldn’t do. I knew I didn’t have control. I didn’t have the skill but it was being at the center feeling this whole area open up wide, wide, wide before me. And the joy and the pleasure of if I could be in there it would be amazing. I was aware that I sucked massively. I wasn’t doing the things that they asked, well. Even though I was doing them to the best of my capacity at the time. As a musician I recognized that I was at the same level of inquiry that I was at in the music practice. Where you’re like oh right I can see it, I can feel it, I don’t know what it’s going to be but I know that I have to work to get there.

TR:

Meanwhile, on the east side, in Georgia to be exact, Laurel Lawson was preparing to enter grad school.

LL:

I grew up playing music both as an amateur and as a professional and acting. I saw this dance class. It was in a great time slot right before I needed to be at one of my acting jobs. I thought it would be interesting, you know pick up a little broader skill base and it would be a good warm up. I’ve done a little bit of jazz like that minimum amount of theatrical dance that you need in order to get through musicals. So I went and signed up for this six week class. Boy I sucked so badly!

TR:

Well Douglas Scott apparently saw some talent there. He’s the founder and director of Full Radius Dance, a premier physically integrated dance school. He invited Laurel to audition for the dance company.

LL:

Two months later I was on stage in my first professional appearance.

It’s a little weird right. I often think about that. It’s like the most “bass awkward” way of falling into this field in some ways. A field that is so competitive that people work and dream and hustle from the time that they’re five years old and I took this weird circuitous path and almost wound up dancing by accident. Maybe that’s the title of my autobiography, “The Accidental Dancer”.

[TR in conversation with AS:]

Laughs…

TR:

The community of professional dancers isn’t that large. Eventually, Alice and Laurel met. First chatting about technique, exercises and shared experiences.

LL:

We always knew we had work to make together. It was just a matter of getting to the point for us as individuals, for us as artists where we were ready to do that. Where we could put together the kind of structure to support it and for the rest of the world to get to the point where we had this little bit of an entry to be able to get other people to realize hey we have something to contribute here. The funding and presentation landscape makes a huge difference in what gets presented and what does not.

TR:

That structure is Kinetic Light.

LL:

At the core of it, Kinetic Light consists of this collective of three artists, Alice, myself and Michael Maag who is our production, projection and lighting designer.

Kinetic Light is a little unusual in the way we operate compared to what you might call a conventional dance company. We’re a multi-disciplinary. In some ways we’re not necessarily a dance company. Dance is front and center but there are also ways in which we are a multi-modal performance company. Are we a tech company? That’s a question that we keep going back to because we’re not quite a dance company.

TR:

There’s multiple functions associated with running a dance company.
Of course, there’s the choreography, but we can’t forget the administrative work of funding, managing projects and more.

And then there’s something of particular interest to those with vision loss that Alice explains has always been a part of the plan.

AS:

My thought was always that we would do access. What I didn’t know was the kind of journey that it would become.

TR:

We’re talking about audio description. Well we’ll call it that for now. But the question is really how do you take a visual art experience like dance and make it available to those who are blind?

First, Alice invited friends to attend a live performance.

AS:

Georgina Kleege who is a Blind professor at UC Berkley. She’s a professor of Blind aesthetics and the arts and writing. She’s got this awesome book out right now called “What Blindness Contributes to Art”.

TR:

The goal was specific.

AS:

We want all of our people to come and have a good experience. How do we do it?

This was in 2016, but in 2012 I began exploring these types of threads anyway in my work. And then she picked up those threads and pushed them to the next level. And I was like ok, let’s do that.

Georgina and Josh Miele who, if you don’t know Josh you should talk to Josh, he’s an amazing technologist.

TR:

Shout out to Reid My Mind Radio Alumni Josh Miele. I’ll link you to his episode on this episode’s blog post.

AS:

Cool!

Georgina and Josh said yeh, ok, so you did better than the average and your definitely on some pathway but that isn’t it. It isn’t enough. We aren’t getting what everybody else is getting.

At that time what we were doing was making description of the physical movement.

LL:

That was really painful for us. this was our community that we had invited to come see us and we failed.
[
We hadn’t offered them an equitable experience.
]

TR:

Describing a dance performance isn’t a straight forward task.

Let’s take an example I feel almost everyone is familiar with.

Let’s say a dancer puts his left foot in.

Audio: Horn!

then puts his left foot out.

Audio: Two horn hits!

he does the Hokey Pokey and turns himself around.

Audio: Hokey Pokey song

Now that’s description!
It’s actually conveying all that’s taking place.
Well, if there’s only one person.

But let’s make that dance a bit more complicated.
say our dancer’s left foot is in while his right hand is up
and his partners right leg is up
and another dancer is flying across the screen with a particularly dramatic facial expression.
I’m not even getting into the lighting or stage props that often accompany the Hokey pokey!

AAS:

What you’re getting is this kind of displaced description. You’re not getting a sense of the art.

This is where Laurel comes in, she’s an engineer and designer and she thought of a way in which you could play multiple sound tracks on an app and a way for it to actually sync in time with the show. And so with this kind of technology at the basis the question became not how you make dance accessible, that’s boring. The question really is how do you transform the art of dance into the art of sound.

LL:

I had a little germ of an idea that would become Audimance.

TR:

Audimance was developed in association with Kinetic Light’s DESCENT.

AS:

Descent is a queer inter-racial love story between two disabled women.

Basically invents a backstory to the sculpture the Toilette of Venus and Andromeda by Rodan.

It figures out what does this goddess from Greek myth doing with this figure from Roman myth and why are they put together. Why does Rodan do that with them? It challenges Rodan’s own notions of feminism and lesbianism. It challenges the place of the incomplete body in Rodan’s thinking and sculpture. It’s an incredible kind of imagining of the relationship between the two. A love story maybe. It shows the ways in which disability and art go together. It re-imagines access ramps. It’s a thing this Descent!

TR:

With that in mind, let’s walk through how a nonvisual audience member experiences this performance using Audimance.

It starts with the pre-show. Here’s Alice.

AS:

The program is recorded. In the program there’s some background context to the work, and overall plot summary, a background on the set, an overarching narrative context if you want that. Rodan’s sculptures so there’s some information about that. Basically, information that is contextual.

TR:

That one aspect of Audimance is already surpassing how many of us experience description. Meaning, no longer are we confined to the strict time limitations dictated by the performance. Audience members may be able to access this pre-show information days before the event itself.

And then, if you arrive at the theater early, before the show…

AS:

One of the things we’ve been developing is a kind of tactile experience. This was something that josh was essential in thinking through. We 3D printed the set. The ramp and you could hold a model of the set in your hand and feel some of the things around that. There’s samples of the costumes, the surface, the flooring of the set, the kinds of material elements.

TR:

You may wonder, why a 3D rendering of the set if you’re physically there? the set of Descent is a ramp. And not just any ramp.

AS:

It’s 24 feet wide, 15 feet deep and it goes to 6 foot high at a kind of pointed mountainous peak that I sit on top of.

Each part of the ramp has its name. There’s the peak it’s a top of a mountain. At the bottom of the peak there are waves and there’s water, projections of waves water and rock. And then there’s this huge deck, this angled deck that is sometimes grass and sometimes a mountain range and sometimes an ocean. And the water waves whip up and down the ocean. It’s incredible!

TR:

You have all of the context information about the upcoming performance. And now, it’s ShowTime!

AS:

“How do you transform the art of dance into the art of sound.”

(Repeated from above but with an effect as if reflecting.)

TR:

That one question became several more that she proposed to her friends experiencing the performance non visually.

AS:

What are you listening to? What is communicative sound for you? How do you get art out of sound? What sounds mean something?

And then the question was what sounds are actually in the dance itself? Here’s where we ended up. We have to be able to convey the sounds of the work itself as a sound.

I rang Disabled Queer Trans gender Poet Eli Clare and I said, will you write poetry for this dance? Eli turned the dance into poetry. And I was like wow!

TR:

Audimance empowers the listener with choice and control. Pairing for example the poetry of Eli Clare with the original sound scape composition of Dylan Keefe from the sound rich podcast radio Lab.

Laurel tells us about other tracks and possibilities.

LL:

We can be working with people who are writing prose. For example maybe even describing it technically so that a nonvisual audience member whose also trained as a dancer is actually hearing in dance language about what we’re doing and understanding it in that medium. We can work with sonification of the stage or our bodies or interpreted sonification of the choreography itself. So for example you might be hearing a breath, a heartbeat a sound (slap, slap) as we contact each other as our chairs hit the stage

If you imagine you’re in a big room, a museum gallery, imagine that there are 20 speakers scattered throughout this room. They could be on the ceiling, floating in the middle of the air, on the walls or the floor and every speaker is playing a different track. But all the tracks are part of the same performance. As you wander through this space you can control what you’re listening to. You’re creating your own experience of this art. You can go cuddle up to a single speaker and listen to one track from beginning to end. find a mix, maybe between three or four speakers that appeals to you. Keep moving and keep listening to the way that the tracks and the performance shifts and changes as you’re constantly in motion between these speakers. Got that image. Ok, condense all of that down into a phone screen and you got Audimance!

Since I am sighted every bit of process all along the way we were going back and forth with non-visual audience members, collaborators, testers.

From the describer side I think we’re opening a lot of stuff up to. We’re trying to involve the describer as collaborator through this process. We’re not replacing audio description, we’re blowing it open.

TR:

With other options for Descent’s nonvisual audience members like an interpreted dramatic dialog, a description track specifically for those with kinesthetic imaginations or those who actually feel what’s being described, plus description of lighting… yeah, kaboom!

LL: on centering blind

Audimance is specifically designed for nonvisual users. It absolutely centers Blind users who have advanced listening skills.

TR:

You know you’re an advanced listener when you have the ability to audibly synthesize simultaneous streams of information. Probably more common is the ability to comprehend information at an increased rate. 25 percent, 50 maybe even double or triple its normal rate.

For example, a more seasoned screen reader user probably sounds like this…

Audio: Fast screen reader reading
“You know you’re you’re an advanced listener when you have the ability to audibly synthesize simultaneous streams of information. Probably more common is the ability to comprehend information at an increased rate. 25 percent, 50 maybe even double or triple its normal rate.”
TR:

Someone new to vision loss and therefore new to screen reader technology and synthetic speech and in general active listening sounds more like this…

Audio: Screen reader voice reading in a slow speed.
” You know you’re an advanced listener when you… Oh my goodness this is slow! I’m getting sleepy, sleepy”

LL:

obviously anyone who is hearing can use it but this isn’t a question of trying to make it work for everyone. It is made for and it centers this population that was being underserved artistically

TR:

With multiple choices, someone new to vision loss may be more comfortable simply choosing one or two tracks such as the poetry or traditional description.

Audimance allows users to make selections at any time since the tracks are synchronized to the live performance.

LL:
Are we providing an identical experience to a sighted audience member watching the dance? No Because that does not exist and saying that we’re making something identical is false equivalence. Do we think we’re creating something that is equitable in terms of a rich multi dimension complicated artistic experience? Something that has been crafted by the artist as part of the piece from the beginning?

Yeah! And that’s the feedback we have gotten about it.

TR:

Audimance is Open Source software that’s still in the early alpha phase of development. But there getting close to where anyone will be able to download the program.

LL:

Where venues will be able to download a creator interface and you can just go in a venue and have it pull up the experience for the show that you’re going to see.

TR:

That could be the more traditional description. But I’m hoping for a more artistic, thoughtful, equitable experience.

LL:

It was created for performance art, but certainly any theatrical performance, potentially even for music performances or for speakers to provide visual descriptions of the people on stage.

[TR in conversation with AS:]
That’s going to be fun to watch when people just kind of take that and say I want to play with it because they’re not even thinking about it from the perspective of inclusion or audio description. And it’s just I want to play with this and see what I can do.

LL:

I am so looking forward to that part of it because technically well when you think of it it doesn’t necessarily have to go with a performance. It can be an independent audio only artistic experience. Having people play with this kind of spatialized durational sonic art is going to be fascinating.

[TR in conversation with AS:]
And so that’s open source meaning anyone is going to be able to have access to that. There’s the equity component of that too. Or is this going to really cost people thousands of dollars? (Laughing…)

LL:

(Laughing)

Well you know the problem with that is if we make it cost thousands of dollars we’re going to have a real hard sell telling venues okay, there’s no excuse for your performance not to be accessible. Or dance companies, choreographers here, even if it’s just you describing your dance. You go into rehearsal and you just do the description if you have to. We’re not telling you you have to pay to bring an additional artist in for the week and house them and so forth.

TR:

Audimance is currently being supported by donations. That’s financial and labor.

LL:

If you are interested in contributing to this software itself as a programmer, as a designer, as a technical writer we need everybody right now. If you’re a project manager. If you’re interested in helping us write instructional content. We need tutorials and how to use it. We’re going to need tutorials to introduce presenters to it eventually. You can find the project on GitHub.

People can make financial donations on our website, KineticLight.org.

TR:

you can even earmark your donations specifically for the Audimance project.

Want to learn more about Audimance, Descent, Alice and Laurel?

AS:

There is a newsletter!

[TR in conversation with AS:]
Really and how would someone subscribe to that?

AS:

On your phone you can text 66866 to sign up.

[TR in conversation with AS:]
Wow, look how fancy you are? (Laughs…)

AS:

Laughs…

[TR in conversation with AS:]

(Playfully)
So you’re telling me, you don’t go to a website and put in all your information. All you have to do is text?

AS:

You can do that too. You can go to the website and put in your information.

[TR in conversation with AS:]

What website would that be?

AS:

(laughs…)
KineticLight.org

[TR in conversation with AS:]
What would folks get from the newsletter?

AS:

That’s a really good question. You would meet some of the team. You would learn about the performances or film screening. You might learn about an award. Sometimes we put in cool ideas about Disability culture. Sometimes we’re talking about work friends of ours are doing.

[TR in conversation with AS:]
Yeh, I like it! Cool!

TR:

I’ll tell you something else that’s pretty cool!
That film screening she mentioned? It’s a film featuring Alice and three other dancers . It takes place…

called Inclinations. it too highlights performance on a ramp. This one however is outdoors.

This particular film consists of audio description with two narrators.

Audio:

TR:

you should recognize that voice. That’s Cheryl Green, a podcast alumni and part of the Reid My Mind Radio family!

And the other describer…

Audio:

TR:

Yours truly!

Big shout out to Cheryl Green, Lisa Niedermeyer and everyone else involved in making that happen! That was fun!

Inclinations has been screened at Festivals in Canada and the US including;
National Dance Day at Kennedy Center
Superfest Disability Film Festival 
Cinema Touching Disability

For more on Inclinations checkout Alice Sheppard.com

Audio: “Check it out y’all!”

TR:

there’s a lot to be excited about Audimance. The feature that in my opinion means the most; It’s empowering.

It shifts the conversation from providing access to creating nonvisual experiences.

There’s so much possibility. Especially when you factor in that the technology is open source. It’s made for live performances but the same concepts can be applied to recorded performances.

We’re in a time where audio production is on the rise. I’m talking about the growth of podcasting. I think about the potential in the live podcasting space. Moving away from the Q&A format to a sound rich experience.

Forget about that idea that we need to wait for the kind help from others. Audimance is a collaborative effort from the cross disability community. If you’re not throwing your fist up in solidarity for that one, check your pulse!

Salute to Alice Laurel and everyone involved with the project!

And if you like what you heard?

Subscribe!
Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Tune In Radio or wherever you get podcasts.

You can always send me feedback or recommend a guest or topic all you have to do is hollaback!

We have the comments section on the blog, ReidMyMind.com.
The email; ReidMyMindRadio@gmail.com
The Reid My Mind Radio Feedback Line where you can leave a voice mail: 1 570-798-7343

I would really love voice messages that I can share on the podcast. If you don’t want to call, you can grab your smart phone and record a voice memo and email the finished recording to ReidMyMindRadio@gmail.com.

I’d love to hear and share the voices of those who are listening. If you want to send a message but don’t want it shared just say so and it’s all good.

I appreciate you listening and if you liked what you heard please rate and even review the show via Apple Podcast. And please, tell a friend to listen. Spread the love, man!

You can always visit www.ReidMyMind.com, that’s R to the E I D like my last name!

AS:

And I was like wow!

Audio: Reid My Mind Radio Outro

TR:

Peace!

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