A New (and Improved!) Way to Watch TV

In these distressing times, I find it helpful to highlight the small glimmers of positivity in our lives.

In that spirit, I want to tell you about my latest joy-sparking activity. Namely: Watching TV shows with the “Audio Description for the Visually Impaired” feature turned on.

To back up: I’m a longtime fan of watching TV and movies with closed captioning. I’m not hearing impaired, but those typewritten words at the bottom of the screen still offer tons of advantages. They allow me to decipher the thick Irish accents on Derry Girls. They inform me who is singing the catchy song in the background of the romcom. They provide occasional delightful typos (the Big Brother contestant telling his costar “Your colon smells good,” instead of the less interesting but more accurate “Your cologne smells good.")

A couple of months ago, I decided to try out another accessibility feature, this one for the visually impaired. Though I’m not visually impaired myself, I figured it might provide benefits for everyone, just as closed captioning does.

I toggled on the “Audio Description” in my Netflix settings, pressed play, and heard a deep voice say:

“A red letter ‘N’ unfolds into a spectrum of colors.”

Well, isn’t that a lovely bit of poetry, I thought to myself. That’s exactly what the red letter ‘N’ does. For the first time in years, I actually noticed the Netflix logo and appreciated it in a new way. (Important caveat: Julie found the Audio Description distracting, so I had to continue the show in another room; A.D. is not everybody’s taste).

A.D. is designed for people with vision impairment or blindness, and it features an offscreen narrator who lays out what is happening on the screen. The descriptions are squeezed into the silent spaces before and after dialogue. They can include:

--Facial expressions: “His jaw tightens.”

--Scenery: “The cottage sits in a sun-dappled forest.”

--Actions: “The detective delivers a roundhouse kick to the drug dealer.”

The feature is available on about half of TV and movies on your average streaming service.

These days, TV for me is both visual (I still watch the screen) but increasingly aural, thanks to all the bonus narration. It’s sort of like watching a show while simultaneously enjoying to an audio book. Some other reasons I love it:

THE WRITING CAN BE EXCELLENT

I was watching the Agatha Christie miniseries The Seven Dials, and one of the characters broke out into a fake smile. The audio describer put it this way: “Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.”

So good! The describer could have said, “she put on a strained smile.” But this phrasing -- “her smile doesn’t reach her eyes” – is so much more evocative. (I checked, and the phrase did not appear in Agatha Christie’s book; it seems to be original to the audio describer)

The extra narration doesn’t take away from the scene. It adds to it. In fact, I’d like to see a new category at the Emmy’s and Oscars for Best Audio Description Writing.

IT’S EDUCATIONAL

I learn about all sorts of things. Hats, for instance. During that same Agatha Christie miniseries, the A.D. narrator described a woman as wearing a “cloche.” Another character wore a “trilby.” I got a little headwear tutorial, complete with helpful visual aids!

Yesterday, when I was watching the movie 28 Days Later, the audio describer said that a zombie-battling character made a “shepherd’s leap.” What the hell is a shepherd’s leap? I googled it, and found out it’s a method of jumping over rocks and ravines using a metal-tipped pole. Who knew? Well, the person who wrote the audio description, and now me, and you.

A.D. helps me catch references that would have gone over my head.

IT ALLOWS FOR MULTITASKING – AND IMAGINATION

Audio Description gives me the freedom to look away from my screen without worrying I’ll miss a crucial plot point.

When I walk my dog at night, I stash my iPhone in my pocket so I can follow New York’s pooper scooper laws, secure in the knowledge that I’ll still know what’s happening on Hacks.

In fact, there are times I prefer listening to the audio track without looking at the screen. For instance, car chases. I know I’m an outlier on this, but I find watching car chases boring. I’d rather listen to a writer’s description, especially if it includes fun words like “fishtailing.”

Perhaps this is because I’m a word person at heart. I find pleasure in taking the chaotic universe and trying to pin it down with a series of sentences. Language gives me the (probably delusional) feeling that reality can be captured. There are many times in my own life when I audio-describe my experiences. When I’m feeling an overwhelming emotion, I try to “name it to tame it,” as the catchphrase goes.

A.D. HELPS WITH THE PESKY TEXT-MESSAGING SCENES

My vision isn’t terrible, but as is typical for middle aged folks, I struggle with anything smalle than 12-point font. (Much to my kids’ dismay, I use my iPhone’s flashlight feature on restaurant menus). Which means I’ve been concerned by the trend of having characters text each other on their smartphones instead of using their vocal cords. I worry no more! With audio description, the narrator reads the texts out loud for me, just like Alexa.

I NOTICE SUBTLETIES I MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Sometimes the Audio Describer plays the part of a film studies professor, pointing out stuff that I should have noticed but didn’t. Yesterday, it pointed out that the “O” in the Focus Features logo is out of focus. Duh. I should have seen that before but somehow missed it.

A few days ago, I was watching Drops of God, a drama set in the world of winetasting. The audio describer pointed out the main character “drums her fingers on the back of a chair.” Cut to a new scene. “Alexander drums his foot on the floor of the lecture hall.”

Two scenes linked by drumming body parts -- a clever little choice by the director that would have gone right over my head. Thanks, audio describer!

I’m grateful that Audio Description exists for me, and I’m grateful, of course, that it exists for those who actually need it: the visually impaired. The service is, by all accounts, immensely useful to that community. One user told a reporter that the days before Audio Description were “really frustrating….I would have to call someone I knew during a commercial break just to find out what was going on. Did they kiss or not? What happened?”

To me, this is much-needed proof that some areas of modern life are improving. Not everything is turning into an industrial waste dumpster fire.

A friend asked me if I feel guilty about using something that was intended for people with vision impairment. I thought about it, and I don’t believe it’s an ethical problem. It’s not the same as, say, using the only disabled bathroom stall and causing a person in a wheelchair to wait. Audio description is not a limited resource. Everyone can use it at the same time. In fact, I’m guessing that if more people start to use Audio Description, streaming services will be incentivized to invest more money and provide it for all shows and movies. So maybe, and I’m just thinking out loud here, it’s unethical not to use Audio Description?

If you feel like experimenting, please go to the language settings in your favorite show or movie and click on “Audio Description” and let me know if you are on my side (it’s awesome) or Julie’s side (it’s extremely distracting).