Netflix has announced on their blog that they’ll be slowly rolling out audio description options for their properties beginning with Marvel’s Daredevil which is currently available on the site (it’s only in English right now). Tracy Wright who is the Director of Content Operations has also stated that their other original series — House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Marco Polo — will follow suit in the coming weeks. They’ve also mentioned that they’ll be working with studios and content creators in offering audio description options across devices and hopefully in multiple languages as well. Here’s a brief explanation of what audio description is and does. It’s for those who are visually impaired/blind.
Audio description is a narration track that describes what is happening on-screen, including physical actions, facial expressions, costumes, settings and scene changes. Customers can choose audio narration just like choosing the soundtrack in a different language.
I think this is wonderful and it’s great that Netflix has taken the necessary steps to make their content accessible to this segment of the population. It’s great that the first show to have audio description as an option is about a blind superhero. I’ve had the chance to check it out it and the quality is definitely there.
This is so great.
I mean, it seems obvious, right?
Oh, thank goodness!
My mother is blind, and I keep telling her how good this show is, but then I have to be like “but not for you. There’s a bunch of other languages and it’s subtitled, and so many fight scenes with no talking.”
So, yay!!!