The current campaign to raise awareness of audio description (AD) [in UK]

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <jism60$ia7$1...@dont-email.me>, Brian Gaff
<Bri...@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>OK, I know a little bit about this, as I was one of the people who suggested
>it over a year ago. Partly funded by government partly by the broadcasters

Thanks for coming back.
[]
>The actual availability is getting better now, and I do believe some pvrs do
>have it, but without talking menus its all a bit academic if the person
>lives alone.

Indeed.
[]
> Sky did have a device called Sky Talker which was supposed to make their
>boxes usable by the blind, but it was very slow and not very understandable
>and many sent it back for a refund.

So it wasn't free.
[]
> One whinge I had is tat RNIB are not looking to the future. they should
>have the next generation of the goodmans box under dev now, as the current
>hardware will not be able to be made for very long.

I fear the dear old 'NIB don't seem that au fait with technology in
general. Not their fault - it requires specialist knowledge, which is at
odds with a lot of what else they do, and is probably expensive to boot,
especially for a charity.
[]
>CH 5 is annoying as when they show American series very few have AD Some do

I'm surprised: I thought the disability lobby had if anything more power
there.

>but it gets trashed when its edited down for the pre watershed showings, or
>to accommodate some celebrity crap for five mins.

Is that trashed irretrievably, or can it be recovered by turning it off
and on again? (I very occasionally find that works with subtitling,
which though I don't need, I usually leave on, as it allows me to
concentrate less.)
[]
>So lets have AD that works, Talking menus on all equipment and some more

(-:

>morally right programming. One other thing, some shows that say subtitles
>have AD and are not flagged correctly. Charlies Angels, some stuff on Film 4
>and on the other side, some stuff with AD seems not to have it.

I got lost at the end there.
>
>More bring to book for cock ups like this please.

Definitely. But any cock-up - especially a technical one, which these
would be taken as being - has little chance of being punished: I suppose
Ofcom are the body one would have to invoke - say no more.
[]
>One oddity recently is on Sky News on Freeview. With ~AD left enabled a
>variable delay on audio is heard on some of the content and you have to turn
>it off to stop it sounding like you are on drugs. This is so on two
>different boxes so its not the box. Someone has obviously fed some clean

(Same chipset though?)

>feed to the ad channel and enabled it which is stupid. I'd also like to see
>a way to split the ad from the normal sound. Families often would like to
>make the AD only hearable by the blind person not the whole family.

Even assuming that were implemented, how would you do it - infrared (or
radio) link to headphones on the blind person?

> And while I'm at it DVDs should standardise on how to view an AD version of
>a film so you can do, for example menu down left down select to get it.
> Brian
>
That would certainly be sensible, so there's little chance ... (-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in
silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in
silencing mankind. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

[Brian Gaff]

The shortening of content is done with no AD, so the shortened content is
not flagged as ad and certainly does not have it even though the unedited
version often broadcast later inevenings did. Thus, for example if you
missed csi new york in its first showing late at night, the next showing
often on 5 usa, at say 8 pm will not hav ad as some of the gore will have
been edited out. it appears that there are no editing suites in 5 which can
preserve the sinchronisation between the data streams when post editing is
done.


I think a lot of this stuff falls into the category of sighted in control of
stuff for the blind again.
The AD would be via headphones. One would only need to have one extra
option to send the ad to a jack socket after all. I have seen it done on a
very old box, but sadly its no longer in production.
As I said in an earlier thread, theloss of subtitles or ad is a chip
problem, one of synchronisation slip. It can at times put the lip sync out
too.
Its a great pity that in later chip runs no fix was ever implimented. I
guess these effects were not considered serious, but now it should be.
This is the short term ism of current tech really, they all think the gear
will be in the bin in three years.


Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email: bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
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