Talking Pictures

By Lisa Bendall

This fall, Family Channel, Canada’s Family Network, announced the premiere of regular narrated television programming in Canada. On November 10 at 9 p.m., Family Channel broadcasted a descriptive version of the Academy-Award-winning 1937 film A Star is Born.

Descriptive video is a breakthrough in communications for people with visual disabilities. The viewer with a visual impairment can get a full sense of what is happening onscreen without consulting sighted viewers to tell them what’s going on or "fill in the gaps."

Descriptive video is to people with visual disabilities what closed-captioning has been to people with hearing impairments. It provides the information that the viewer with a disability might otherwise miss while watching television: action, characters, costumes, sets. Family Channel is the first Canadian television station to integrate descriptive video into its programming on a regular basis.

The following is an opening scene from Top Gun -- a popular, mainstream film -- but this particular version, on loan from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), is not intended for your average viewer. This specially narrated form of the movie is designed to provide someone with a visual disability with the full audio-visual experience:

(Maverick’s plane stands on its wing...The Soviet pilot looks over his shoulder, then does a hard right turn...The first MiG stays pointed straight at Cougar’s tailfins...Maverick’s plane appears...Maverick banks hard right; he blinks and frowns with the force of the turn. Our view of the sky tilts crazily as Maverick rolls his plane upsideÄdown in a three-quarter spin...Maverick hovers above the Soviet...The two clear cockpits are only a yard apart...Maverick gives the Soviet the finger. Goose snaps a Polaroid. Maverick rights his plane. The MiG pilot looks over his shoulder and dives away...Cougar’s body trembles; sweat breaks out on his face.)

The movie action is thrilling, don’t-stop, edge-of-your-seat excitement; and the narrator continues to relay all of this information accurately in a clear, calm voice, taking advantage of the brief pauses in the characters’ dialogue to describe to the viewer what is happening onscreen.

Descriptive video was first brought into mainstream television by Jim Stovall, founder and president of Narrated Television Network based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Stovall, who lost his vision six years ago, had always enjoyed movies. After he became blind, "I thought I’d be able to put a videotape on and kind of follow it from the audio track," he says. "I found that to be a very frustrating experience. So I found that by adding just a few brief narrations, it can really open the whole thing up."

Narrated Television Network began by selling and renting narrated home videos, but the company could not keep up with the demand in a country where 13 million citizens are visually impaired. So, five years ago, Stovall went into television with The NTN Showcase. As host of the Showcase, Stovall shows a narrated feature film and interviews some of the actors -- past guests include Katharine Hepburn, Jack Lemmon and Dorothy L’Amour. The NTN Showcase, currently broadcasting four days a week but scheduled for seven days a week come January, airs on 1,028 cable systems in the U.S., going into 25 million homes.

In Canada, Family Channel leads the way in bringing descriptive video to television on an ongoing basis. Launched in September 1988, Family Channel provides "wholesome, entertaining, high-quality" commercial-free programming designated for child and family viewers.

Since its inception, Family Channel has been broadcasting closed-captioned versions of programs wherever possible for people with hearing impairments. But subscribers with visual disabilities often called in as well to make comments or requests. The channel’s president, Len Cochrane, was acquainted with a family whose mother had a visual impairment, and this experience had raised his awareness about both the capabilities and needs of someone with this disability. When Cochrane saw descriptive television in the U.S., he became interested in bringing it to Canada.

"Families get together to watch television, and if someone is visually impaired, they’re excluded from the experience," says Barbara Bailie, Director of Communications at Family Channel. "With the descriptive video, they’re not so secluded. They can participate." Ms. Bailie adds that "we also believe that for people who are not visually impaired, descriptive video really does enhance the enjoyment."

"Family Channel has always had an emphasis on encouraging families to watch television together," says Ms. Bailie. "In these days, where the family is so fragmented, we’d like to be seen as a service that brings families closer."

Family Channel will broadcast one Hollywood classic each month. Movie listings are not yet available in alternate format, but people with visual disabilities who wish to find out more about descriptive programming on Family Channel can call Ms. Bailie at (416) 956-2030.

The CNIB has also begun a project:a year-long pilot for a descriptive video library service. Participants in this project will be able to choose popular narrated movies from an annotated catalogue and borrow them from the CNIB library by mail.

"We had an overwhelming response," says Janice Hayes, Director of Client Services for the CNIB Library for the Blind. At the end of the pilot project, the CNIB will evaluate its efficiency and, hopefully, make the service available to all of its clientele. "The interest is definitely out there," says Hayes.

Descriptive video is certainly a unique experience. Because of the subjectivity involved in describing visual scenes, it provides room for flexibility -- and, often, unbridled creativity. Consider this sexy later scene from CNIB’s version of Top Gun, in which dialogue is virtually nonexistent and the narrator pulls out all stops in his continuous visual description:

(Her pale green eyes fix on him, un-blinking. Maverick’s throat tenses. He starts to reply, then stops. Impulsively, he cradles her face in his hands and pulls her into a long, urgent kiss. She wraps her arms around his leather jacket. Nighttime: They stand facing each other in Maverick’s bedroom, awash in blue moonlight. Charlie pulls her white blouse slowly off her shoulders. Bare-chested, his jeans unbuttoned, Maverick leans into her. We see them from the neck up, silhouetted by the light from the fluttering window curtains. Later, in slow motion, their faces lower onto the bed...)

Descriptive video does involve more than steamy action movies. It is a concept that can be applied in essentially any video situation: television programming, commercials, news and more. For people with visual disabilities, descriptive video means complete independence when watching movies or television.

(Lisa Bendall is an ABILITIES staff writer.)