Talk Description to Me

December 17th, 2020 7:30-9:00pm EST This has been an extraordinary year packed with important and iconic moments captured in images and videos, discussed and debated in the news, and online. We have thoroughly enjoyed describing and discussing these events on our Talk Description to Me podcast, and are proud of this small contribution to accessible media, which is now enjoyed by blind and low vision communities in over 30 countries. To thank our avid podcast subscribers, and welcome new listeners into the fold, we will be hosting a Year in Review Zoom Event which will become our final episode of the season. We invite you and your friends to join us, ask questions, and be part of the conversation. To book your spot, please contact us directly at TalkDescriptionToMe@gmail.com  Talk Description to Me Year in Review Live Recording December 17, 2020 7:30-9 pm EST RSVP to TalkDescriptionToMe@gmail.com with the subject 2020 RSVP

Describing Race and Skin Tone I’m the kind of person who will torture himself over a flub. It starts as a niggling “Wish I hadn’t said that” feeling in the back of my mind, and grows and grows until I confess my sins and exorcize the Demon Regret.   Earlier this week we posted an episode in which I described Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh as having a dark complexion. I then stuck with it and used the same phrase to describe his wife, Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu. To me, that’s not a helpful description of skin tone, and it certainly isn’t an appropriate description of race. It was an unplanned phrasing that plopped from my mouth - and one that I wouldn’t normally use. But I let it slide, and here we are. Instead of just exorcizing the Demon Regret with this blog post, I thought I might take the opportunity to talk about race and skin tone, and how I - and others - describe them. This is a hot topic in Audio Description, and it might be helpful for listeners to know how some describe...

Facts and Accuracy   by JJ Hunt When describing an image for an art gallery, or a movie for a broadcaster, being 100% accurate is an important part of the job. If a character is reading a book and I call it a magazine - that’s a flub and it needs to be corrected. But can that standard be maintained when having intentionally descriptive conversations? In theory, sure. But it requires exhaustive research, a narrow and predetermined conversation, and no generalizations - only specifics. And boy, does that take the fun out of a good conversation! When re-listening to our first few episodes, I noticed a fairly obvious pattern; when our conversations veered into territory I hadn’t fully prepared for, or required descriptions of images or videos that I hadn’t seen for days or even weeks, my descriptions were more vague and included some minor inaccuracies. That’s inevitable, I suppose, but I’m not entirely comfortable with it. When Chris and I are recording I have notes and my laptop...

Neutrality and Its Limits When we decided to describe the image of George Floyd being killed by a white police officer, one of our early concerns was neutrality and objectivity. Audio description relies on objectivity to build a verbal representation of what’s presented visually. This is its purpose. We, however, aren’t robots, at least not yet. We don’t shy away from the difficult subjects, and there are times when neutrality feels impossible, or just downright inappropriate. Our goal is to explore and describe, not to editorialize, and we’ll do our best to present information in such a way that lets you make your own judgements. But that’s easier to do (and makes more sense!) when describing a TV show or movie than it is when having a contextual conversation about real-life events. Should any of us be neutral when discussing George Floyd’s murder? We both understand that we speak from various positions of privilege. We’re not always going to get it right. Sometimes our language will...