Talk Description to Me

Sonification I love sonification. I know it’s a bit geeky, but professionally, there are few things that me happier than finding the perfect bit of audio to include in a description. When an idea, or image, or data set is translated into sound - whether formally or informally - it can really enhance understanding and appreciation for those who are blind or low vision. I have used cartoon boings to sonify eyebrow shrugs, drum beats to sonify intensified continuity in filmmaking, and today, a squeeze box to sonify Donald Trump’s gestures. Ok, to be fair, I didn’t come up with that last one. But I was happy to pounce on it when describing Donald Trump for our Talk Description to Me podcast. One of Trump’s most common gestures is an in-and-out action with his hands. He holds out both hands, palms facing one another, and moves them closer together and further apart - in-and-out, in-and-out - as if describing the sizes of fish he caught last weekend. A YouTuber named Huw Parkinson has put t...

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...

The Portland Protests Examining the images and videos of the Portland Protests has been emotionally exhausting. One moment I'm terrified and livid, and the next I'm proud and joyful. And there's an undercurrent of tension and despair in these clips that's a hard to shake or ignore. We discussed lots of specific images and videos in this episode. Below are some embedded links if you'd like to explore them for yourself. If you're interested in the article on Less Lethal weapons, you can find it here , and if you'd like some more info on Black Hawk, check out my earlier blog post from July 19th.  The Wall of Moms - In pictures from BBC News The Wall of Vets - article with video from The New York Times The Naked Athena - uncensored video posted to YouTube

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...

Black Hawk In our recent conversations about sports teams appropriating cultures, and adopting names and mascots based on racial stereotypes, we mused about the name Blackhawks, used by the Chicago's NHL team. There was much left to discuss, but it neither fit into the episode nor our description-rich mandate. But if you’re curious about the name, how it came to be, and why it might be less ignorant and hurtful than other appropriated names, here’s a great article from The Atlantic, originally published in June, 2015. After we recorded this episode, several sports teams made major announcements about their names and logos - most notably the Washington Redskins. There are lots of news reports circulating about this, including this brief primer with accompanying video on CNN.  For images of Aunt Jemima, check out this Pinterest collection titled Aunt Jemima Throughout History .  

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...