Category: Audio Description

I am thrilled to share news of an accessible event at the Wexner Center for the Arts. As this is a blog about audio description, I’d like to point out the audio described version of the event is available for streaming this week. All of the details are below in the email I received from Helyn Marshall. Kudos to Helyn and the staff at the Wexner for their attempts to make art truly available to everyone!

Here are all the details as outlined in Helyn’s email:

Dear Accessibility Professionals, Practitioners, and Friends,

I am writing to share some fast-breaking news on the accessibility front for Film/Video offerings at the Wex!

Starting tonight, we’re showing the new documentary film Her Socialist Smile, which shares Helen Keller’s work as one of the most passionate activists and advocates of her time, including an open captioned, in-person screening at 7pm on Wednesday, September 22.

In an exciting example of the continued expansion of our accessibility efforts, we are also streaming the Audio Descriptive Version of Her Socialist Smile (which the Wex provided seed money for the creation of the AD Track) for one week only, beginning today. 

Here’s a neat blog article Expanding access for Her Socialist Smile written by Chris Stults, Associate Film/Video Curator for the Wex, that shares how he found the film and its director, and helped to line up the support for the creation of an AD version of the film, which we are so happy to be able to share on our site with descriptive transcript available, in a pay-what-you-can model for greater accessibility for all.

This all very literally just came together yesterday; apologies that I couldn’t share with a little more notice, but I would so appreciate it if you could give this film a signal boost via social media or through your networks. Her Socialist Smile is a beautiful documentary and something that I’m really pleased the Wex could help support expanded access to.

With care,

Helyn 

Helyn Marshall

Accessibility Manager

Digital Accessibility Coordinator

wexner center for the arts

614-688-3890

Pronouns: she/her/hers | Why Pronouns Matter

Two years ago today, I launched this blog. Today is also Helen Keller’s birthday, so Helen Keller and I have at least one thing in common. In honor of the anniversary of Helen Keller’s birth and this blog, here is an encore of my second blog entry (posted two years ago tomorrow):

Happy Birthday Helen Keller: June 27, 1880

Photo courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind Helen Keller Archives

Above is a 1955 black and white photograph of Helen Keller, on her 75th birthday, assisted by Polly Thomson (secretary and companion) serving birthday cake.

In this black and white photograph, two older women stand shoulder to shoulder behind a lace covered table. On the table is a three-tiered cake decorated with icing flowers and swags and a single small slender lit candle. A stack of small plates with dark patterned rims sits to the left of the cake.

The woman on the left, Helen Keller, is a few inches taller than the woman on the right. Her face is cast slightly downwards. Her eyes are open yet her gaze is not fixed upon anything within the picture frame. Her is mouth opened in a smile. Helen’s dark wavy hair is parted on the left and pulled back from her face. Short waves of whiter hair flanking the part frame her face. Her light-colored damask, short-sleeved dress has a V-shaped neckline that is both wide and deep. It covers her shoulders and dips down to just above her breasts. She wears a triple strand of round white pearls around the base of her neck. Her right arm, bent at the elbow, reaches forward slightly as the broad bladed cake knife in her right hand poises between icing flowers atop the cake, its tip just behind the lone birthday candle. The knife obscures the writing on the far side of the candle but two words, one above the other, are visible on the near side: Birthday Helen.

The woman on the right, Polly Thomson, is wearing a darker dress of the same style and similar fabric except for the sleeves on which are fuller and pouf out at the banded cuff just above the elbow. Her hair is darker than Helen’s and is also worn in waves pulled off the face and parted on the left. With her chin tucked in, Polly’s head tips down toward the cake. Her downcast eyes direct our attention to the cake and the four hands of the women.

Both of Polly’s arms are held in towards her body and are bent at the elbows. Her right arm crosses in front of Helen’s left arm, seen just between the two women’s bodies and below Polly’s right elbow. Polly’s right hand reaches across Helen’s waist as she holds, her fingers gently grasping, the top of Helen’s right hand as Helen cuts the cake. Polly’s lower left arm crosses her body as she loosely holds Helen’s left hand in hers.

The touching right hands and forearms of the women create a V shape at Helen’s waistline, above and to the left of the cake. Their touching left hands and forearms create a smaller V shape, echoing the first, at Polly’s waistline. The down-turned heads and points of the V that are created by the hands direct our attention to the cake.

In the background on the left, behind Helen’s right shoulder, is a candle in a wall sconce. To the right of the sconce, we see the top left corner of the narrow black frame of a picture or document, the glare from the flash bulb obscuring its contents. In the lower left, below Helen’s right elbow the upper left of the dark wooden frame of a shield-backed chair is seen. Between the women and behind Polly on the right, are indistinct dark shadowy shapes resulting from the photographer’s flash.

As you probably know, Google highlights all sorts of interesting things with the artwork known as the Google Doodle at the top of their search page. Today’s animation (seen below) celebrates Seiichi Miyake, the Japanese inventor of the Tenji block — those blocks that have raised bars and bumps and create detectable warnings on the sidewalk, train platforms, etc. When you click on the animation, you are taken to a page that has stories from all over about Seiichi Miyake and his bumpy Tenji blocks.

Here is a description of today’s doodle:

A grey curb runs diagonally from the upper left corner to the center of the wide rectangular picture frame. A small area of dark grey, almost black, street with part of a white bar from a striped crosswalk is visible in the lower left corner of the image. On the other side of the curb are two rows of square yellow paving blocks with raised bumps. Beyond these pavers is a dark grey sidewalk. The grid of the sidewalk is interrupted a path of more yellow paving blocks. These yellow blocks have raised bars and are perpendicular to the swath of blocks with the bumps along the curb. The white ball and red tip of a white cane appears in the upper right corner of the image. As the cane sweeps from left to right, it is followed by a pair of feet wearing black sneakers with rounded white capped toes and laces. The feet, at the bottom of jeans-clad legs, approach the intersection of the blocks with the raised bars and the blocks with the raised dots. The cane continues to sweep back and forth as it points to the blue, red, ochre, and green letters that spell “GOOGLE” along the curb-side edge of the dotted blocks. As the feet meet and stop at the intersection of the blocks, the tip of the cane comes rest between their toes.

Last month, I had the opportunity to join co-hosts Marlene Brisk, Elizabeth Clark on and fellow guests Shirley Roberts and Chuck Adkins on “Morning Exchange” on VOICEcorps radio to discuss audio description. The show, which originally aired on September 28th, is now available to listen to on demand. No subscription is necessary to stream live or on demand audio.

If you are not familiar with VOICEcorps, you should check out their website. It’s a great resource for anyone with low or no vision.

Information about the film itself, including trailers with audio description, is available at the Guide Dogs for the Blind website.