Ep. 43: Close Up with the American Council of the Blind: ADP Co-Chairs, Carl Richardson & Kim Charlson

Carl Richardson and Kim Charlson are the co-chairs of the American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project, or ADP. They join Lee and Alex to discuss the various media-related committees of the ACB and how they are helping to advance accessibility in the entertainment industry. We also discuss the upcoming ACB virtual and in-person conference, as well as the panels that will be available for you to attend.

ACB website: https://www.acb.org/home

ACB convention info:  https://acbconvention.org/?p=108

ACB link app for iOS: https://link.acb.org/ 

The Audio Description Project: https://adp.acb.org/ 

If you have any questions or comments about anything covered in this episode, please e-mail us at darkroomfilmcast@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and YouTube at @darkroomfilmcast. 

Check out the Blind Can Film Festival hosted by our sponsor, Ben Fox:
https://www.blindcan.com

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Transcript

Lee Pugsley
Happy summer, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Dark Room, where two blind cinephiles illuminate the sighted. I'm Lee Pugsley.

Alex Howard
I'm Alex Howard.

Lee Pugsley
And this is a podcast hosted by two legally blind guys for film lovers of all abilities. And today we have some really exciting guests. And Alex, I'll go ahead and throw it over to you.

Alex Howard
So today we have Kim Charlson and Carl Richardson from the ACB ADP. They're co-chairs over there. Hello, guys. Welcome to the podcast.

Kim Charlson
Thanks, Alex and Lee.

Carl Richardson
Thank you.

Alex Howard
So for those of you who don't know, that stands for the American Council for the Blind Audio Description Project. We would love to hear about you guys. Kim, if you want to go first and just tell us your blind journey and how you found yourself at the Audio Description Project.

Kim Charlson
Sure. I'm going to say that Carl and I are co-chairs of the American Council of the The Blind, Audio Description Project. I have the honor of being a past President of the American Council of the Blind. In fact, I was the first woman President of the American Council of the Blind from 2013 to 2019. I serve on the board now as well of directors for ACB in the role of Immediate Past President. I've been involved with ACB's audio description project for probably since its inception, almost, which was in 2009, in a variety of capacities. I was chair for a little bit. When I became president, I stepped away because I had a lot of other things to do besides ADP stuff. But in 2019, I came back as co-chair with Carl, and we've been doing a lot of great work that I'm excited to be able to tell you about later on in the program.

Carl Richardson
So, yeah, my name is Carl Richardson. I am also co- chair, along with Kim, and I've been involved off and on in the world of audio description for more than 20 years. I actually worked in the field of audio description for a short time at the Media Access Group that invented audio description for television and did some of the early days of cinema as well. Then I left that, but I wanted to stay in the field because like Alex and Lee, I am also a cinephile. When I lost my vision, I didn't know to do, and audio description gave me my love of film back. I joined the audio description project, I think when Kim became President, and she put me on the media committee. I believe that was right. And ever since then, we've enjoyed tremendous growth both in the industry of audio description and the audio description project as we proceed on our goals and mission, which is basically to create more audio description everywhere, but quality audio description. And we have several areas we can to talk about, if you wish, within the field of audio description.

Kim Charlson
Alex, you also asked a question about blind journey, and I'll give a little bit of my background, and then Carl can elaborate, because I think that'll be helpful for your listeners to understand our background. I've been legally blind since I was 11 years old. I was diagnosed at age 11 with juvenile glaucoma. Glaucoma is one of those diseases that gradually steals away your vision. My parents knew that that was probably going to happen, so they made sure that I had a solid education. I learned Braille when I could still see really well and didn't quite understand why I was learning Braille at the time, but did it and liked it. Now I'm a leading expert in the world of Braille, Braille production, Braille code, all kinds of different things, and I have no functional vision any longer. I use a guide dog to get around. My day job is that I am the Executive Director Director of the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library, which is the NLS affiliate of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. And I supervise a staff of 35 people that provides the library services for about 25,000 people in Massachusetts and throughout New England.

Alex Howard
Wow. I use Bard? Yes. So are you involved with Bard?

Kim Charlson
Yes! Absolutely.

Carl Richardson
Oh, big time.

Kim Charlson
Yeah, definitely. Bard comes from NLS directly, but each state is responsible for signing people up and making sure that they have access to Bard. So we're very involved with thousands of our borrowers here in Massachusetts that are download users and use Bard all the time.

Carl Richardson
In fact, I downloaded three books this morning.

Alex Howard
For those of you who don't know, Bard is a service for the blind where you get free audiobooks. So it is awesome. I have about seven books downloaded on my phone for free.

Carl Richardson
I got like 80 books.

Lee Pugsley
Also, Kim, in relation to your journey with blindness, I have glaucoma as well, so I can relate to just the digression of vision over time. My mom was also very good to make sure that I had the skills that I needed when I was younger to prepare for the future as well. I'm glad that you also had that, too.

Kim Charlson
Yeah.

Carl Richardson
My journey is a little different in that I didn't I would be suffering from vision loss until I was older, although I was born with a degenerative eye disease called Usher syndrome, which is where it affects both hearing and vision. So I was born hard of hearing, and later on lost my vision. So I started off as a very young child for communication purposes, going to a Deaf school. It was actually there that I fell in love with film because you got to remember this was the day before closed captioning in the '70s, so captioning did not exist. So Deaf and hard-of-hearing people did not have a way to watch television or movies. And so the Department of Ed at the time funded this program where they would subtitle movies in 16 millimeter and mail them out to Deaf clubs in schools, just kind of like a Netflix DVDs mails, except they were doing it with real canisters of films. And at that time, I was nonverbal and not really talking, but the teachers saw that I was fascinated with the projector. So they taught me how to string the projector, load the film, rewind the canisters at the end of the movie. And I would sit there watching all these Disney movies and use the subtitles to learn how to read with what I could hear because I had enough hearing. But it was there that I can remember taking off the strips of film and looking in each individual cell and realizing they were individual pictures. And that's where I fell in love with film. I didn't realize that 30 years later, I would also be working in the field of captioning and audio description, but that's how I started.

And so I went to high school and I went to film school, wanted to be a filmmaker, even moved out to LA for a short time, lived in Studio City. But then I had to give up driving and I was working on a movie set where I knocked down some [indistinct] lights and I destroyed the set. Well, not the set, but a piece that was crucial to the set, and I did destroy that. So they had to delay the shooting, and I got fired. And I didn't know what to do. This was after working on probably a dozen TV shows and films. I didn't know what to do. This was only 1990, 1991. ADA, people didn't really know what it was. I didn't really consider myself disabled, so I came home and I just did other jobs. But then one day I decided, okay, I became legally blind in, I think '96, '97 when I was 29 or 30. And I decided at that point, that was a wake up signal once I became legally blind. And I really wasn't doing much. But I decided, A, to move into the city so I could take advantage of public transportation, B, get a guide dog so I could be even more independent. And C, work in the field of film and television again. And I said, I made a bet with a friend, I'm going to do it all in 12 months. I did two of those things in 12 months. It took me a little longer to get the job in film and television, but eventually I ended up at WGBH, and that's where I learned about audio description. I didn't stay there. I've since moved on. I am now not quite 100% blind. I still still have some light perception, but I'm more and more functionally acting like a person who's totally blind. And I wear two hearing aids, and my hearing loss is rather significant. I would not be able to have a conversation with you guys if I was not wearing my hearing aids. So I do have a dual sensory loss, and I'm a guide dog user. And my full-time, daytime job is that I am an ADA Coordinator for the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston, where it's my role to make all the programs, services, and activities at the Statehouse accessible to people of all backgrounds and abilities. Sometimes I get involved in some of the other state initiatives for the Commonwealth just because of my position at the Statehouse.

But that's my journey. My journey was a little longer than Kim's only because with the nature of a progressive vision in denial. But once I accepted it, we moved forward. But I love audio description because audio description gave me my love of film back. And by working and advocating for audio description, it makes me still feel like I'm sticking to my original mission in life, which was to be involved in the world of film, because I'm really not on a day-to-day basis. I'm not involved in any productions or scriptwriting or anything. But by being involved with audio description, I can feel like I'm making the art of cinema available to those who love them.

Alex Howard
I can definitely relate to all of that, especially with the denial. And then I started using a white cane probably later than I should have. And then, yeah, working in audio description now, I definitely get what you're saying about, yeah, that's how I feel like I'm working in film by trying to make things more accessible as opposed to doing scriptwriting or any of that stuff.

Carl Richardson
And you are a very valued member of our committee, Alex. So we appreciate. Thank you.

Alex Howard
We definitely want to get into the committee. I do want to ask you guys both a fun question first, though. What is the name of each of your guide dogs?

Kim Charlson
My dog is named Ida Bell, and she is a female German Shepherd, and she's eight years old.

Carl Richardson
And my dog is Dayton, like Dayton, Ohio, and he's a male yellow Labrador who just turned three.

Lee Pugsley
Both really great names, too. Like very unique names that you don't hear every day, so I love it.

Alex Howard
Yeah. I'm very impressed, Carl, that you were able to get your dog in 12 months because I'm on the waitlist. I've been on the waitlist since February, and I still have another year to go.

Kim Charlson
He pulled a couple of strings, and that's- you know.

Carl Richardson
I have some nepotism going on without getting into… I hate to say it, it took me two weeks to get into a guide school. But I can't pull that now, but that was a long time ago.

Kim Charlson
And you got your dog from Guiding Eyes, and I got my dog from Seeing Eyes.

Carl Richardson
This dog. My first dog was from Leader Dog, but this dog, I've had four dogs now from Guiding Eyes, and Kim's had-

Kim Charlson
Five from Seeing Eye.

Carl Richardson
Yeah. But Alex, hang in there, you'll get it. The world has changed. It takes a lot longer to get a guide dog, even for Kim and I, than it used to.

Alex Howard
Yeah, I'm super excited. But yeah, do you guys want to tell us about the different committees and the different goals of the Audio Description Project?

Carl Richardson
So the audio description project is actually made up of several committees, and I'm going to do this from memory. So if I forget, I'm going to ask Kim to jump in. But first, we have the Section 508 Committee, which has to do with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, requiring all federal government videos to be accessible through captioning and audio description. Right now, that committee is trying to find out its direction due to some of the regulation changes at the federal level, but it is a very active committee, and we're doing what we can. So that's one committee. The next committee is the Performing Arts Committee, which has to do with all things performing art, National Park, museums, anything where people culturally go to visit. It can be live audio description, it can be pre-recorded audio description, it can even be audio description that's a document on a website such as the National Park Service. That's a very varied committee and a very challenging committee because the world of theater is so siloed. It isn't like a movie theater chair were you can hit 3,000 theaters at once. It's a challenging committee to figure out how to make an impact, but it is a very good committee and a valuable committee.

The next committee is the Award Committee, which does the-- Every year, the Audio Description Project puts out a call for awards for people we want to recognize in the field of audio description. That can be from research to theater to media to Lifetime Achievement Award, people that have made a good impact in the field of audio description. We videotape the acceptances and play that at our national convention coming up in July and then put the video on YouTube for people to see in our website as well. The Gaming Committee. This is one of the more...

Kim Charlson
Yeah!

Carl Richardson
This is our newest committee. Frankly, right now, I don't want to say it's our most exciting because I'm biased towards the Media Committee, but it is a very exciting committee. Alex, who is on this call, the host of this podcast, is one of the members. Kim and I don't know what to do when we're on these calls with these committees because we don't play video games and we're trying to keep up, but they are very exciting, very motivating, and I think you'll see a lot from this committee in the next few months. The reason why we wanted to include this or make this a brand new committee was because gaming now, revenue outpaces that of traditional media and film and television, DVD, cable TV. The game and revenue outpaces that. We want to make sure that the blind and low vision community is also involved in that world and has the ability to be entertained and played games just like everybody else.

Next is the BADIE Committee, B-A-D-I-E, and it stands for Benefits of Audio Description and Education. This is a cool little subcommittee where we, in a collaboration with a company called Described and Captioned Media Project, which is funded by the Department of Education, we put up some videos and we asked children or younger adults in the K through 12 school education system to watch a video and critique the audio description and hoping that we will inspire them to be lifelong users of audio description. We have a website with a blog with all the essays and it's a fun little committee.

The Media Committee is the one that I am the chair of, but Kim and I really co-chair, but I'm the chair of it. We cover everything that's traditional media: film, television, cable, broadcast, DVDs, you name it, it's covered. This committee has been involved in a lot of things, and we've seen an explosion. Kim was very much involved with the structured negotiations with HBO Max and Netflix, created audio description for those two services back in 2016. Kim and I and others on the committee have played various roles in the creation of the 21st Century Video Accessibility Act, which mandates audio description for television. We actually are trying to get a new version of the bills called the 21st Century Video Technology Act, which increases the mandate for audio descriptions in the channels and the technology... The CVAA also covers, for instance, accessible TV sets, accessible DVD players. It's not just limited to audio description, but it also has to do with technology that we use to watch audio description. And Kim and I are somewhat involved with the Federal Communications Committee, along with the ACB, members of the ACB, involved with the Federal Communications Commission, which sets the rules for that. Many of us on the Media Committee have various relationships with many of the audio description providers and those who show it from the streaming services to the network. So that's a busy committee with a lot of long-term goals. You don't always see results right away, but you do over time. And that committee has done a lot of good work. And next is the conference committee, where Kim Charlson, my co-chair, is the chair of that committee. And I'm going to let Kim talk about that committee.

Kim Charlson
Thank you, Carl. So the Audio Description Project, since its inception, has had a conference, either biannually or lately, we've been doing it annually, and we've been doing it virtually, so that we can expand the attendance and participation in the conference. And we have what I like to think of as cutting edge panel presentations that touch on various aspects of audio description and the field of audio description and trying to educate, inform, and grow what we're doing, what we're talking about, informing and educating. The Audio Description Project virtual conference is being held June 26th through the 28th. That's Thursday, the 26th, then through Saturday, the 28th of June. It's all on Zoom and registration to get your Zoom link is through the American Council of the Blind because it's part of the ACB Convention. You can go to ACB.org to find the link for registering for the conference. That's if you want to get a Zoom link. There's a small fee to register and get in on Zoom. It will also be possible to listen only to the conference on ACB Media, which is an A-Lady skill that you can ask your A-Lady device to play ACB Media, and it should load that, and then it will ask you, Which channel do you want? I don't know at this point what channel the ADP conference will be on, but there are 10 channels on ACB Media. So if worse comes to worse, you can poke around and find them. There'll be a lot of other programming going on on those days on other topics as part of the ACB conference.

Carl Richardson
We also have an app that you can download.

Kim Charlson
Yeah. ACB Link is a great app to use on your phone that's free, and it gives you access to all the conference sessions as well.

Alex Howard
Is that a free way to get access as well?

Kim Charlson
That is, yes. Once you download the app, then you have ongoing free access to all of the media channels for ACB.

Carl Richardson
And most of these sessions will be made available on the podcast after the fact as well.

Kim Charlson
So the first session of the conference takes place on Thursday, June 26th, from 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM, Central Time. And the reason that we use Central Time is because the in-person ACB convention taking place from July 4th through the 11th is in Dallas, Texas. And so we go by the time zone that the conference is in. So the first session is Audio Description Best Practices in Movie Theaters. And I'm going to let Alex and Carl talk about this because Carl is the moderator and Alex is part of the program.

Carl Richardson
So this was an idea given to us by Alex, to be honest with you. And we said, yeah, run with it. And he helped us get some of the panelists for the presentation. Alex is going to represent the perspective of a person who goes to the movies.

Kim Charlson
I didn't describe him as a person who goes to the movies. I described him in the description as "enthusiastic blind theater goer and co-creator of the Dark Room podcast."

Carl Richardson
There you go.

Kim Charlson
That's very impressive. 

Carl Richardson
Okay. Alex, but going back to what I said, how many movies a week do you go to?

Alex Howard
Usually three or four. Well, now we're allowed to do four for AMC.

Carl Richardson
Okay, on your movie pass. Yes. With his wide knowledge of how to use devices in the movie. And the point of this is to encourage, because the blind community has had many negative experiences going to the movie theaters, and we want to encourage them to keep going, keep advocating. And I think the technology has gotten better. So we want to encourage-

Alex Howard
Especially, if I can add to that, too, Carl, I was thinking for people who are blind, it can be very isolating. I love going to the movies, and I keep hearing, yeah, like you were saying, a lot of people don't go. So this panel is to encourage to get that communal experience for blind people.

Kim Charlson
Exactly. Some of the other presenters on this panel are a representative from Cinema United. That organization used to be known as the National Association of Theater Owners. We've got a representative, Randy Smith, from that organization to talk about movies and accessibility from the theater's perspective. And then a really great representative, Kathleen Eubanks. She works at the Prospector Theater in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which is just an amazing theater that hires people with disabilities and also has a kind of sub-business of selling popcorn, all kinds of flavored popcorn that disabled workers produce, and they sell it all over the country.

Carl Richardson
And Randy Smith, we actually have a long history with him because he used to be the vice president of Regal and was very much instrumental in setting up the accessibility of Regal in the early days for audio description. So we're very excited.

Kim Charlson
Great. So the next program that day, Thursday, the 26th, is from 2:30 to 3:45. It is Writing Audio Description with AI Tools. And this one's really important. It's moderated by one of our committee members, Renee Arrington-Johnson. We're obviously going to talk about what's going on with AI, how we manage that, monitor it, make sure that quality is there, but when the human factor needs to step in and be a part of this to ensure quality. Some of the speakers for that panel are Dr. Joel Snyder, who's the former director of the Audio Description Project, and he stepped down from that role a year or so ago. He does have his own company, Audio Description Associates, where he continues to craft audio description and work in the area and train potential new describers. Caroline Derozier, she is the founder and CEO of Scribly, which is a public company that works with captioning and is venturing into audio description. They do a lot of work with AI, and she's going to talk about how that's being incorporated into her product. Dr. Brett Oppegaard, who is at the University of Hawaii, and he does the UniD project, which is a project for training describers, National Park Service staff, primarily, to understand the principles of audio descriptions so that they can craft audio description for National Park Service, films, videos, and brochures, and then also incorporate those audio describe brochures into their app for the National Park Service and the UniD app, U-N-I-D. You can download that and it gives you access to a whole lot of National Park Service brochures.

We also have Professor Sri Kurniawan, and she's from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and she has done a lot of research and some projects related to audio description and blind consumers that I think will be really interesting to put into the perspective of AI and how it can be used in a positive way with audio description. Then the final panelist on that session is Rick Morin, who is the Director of ACB Media and IT Services for the American Council of the Blind. And he's been experimenting a little bit with using AI to craft audio description. He's going to talk about from his perspective as a blind person, how he's been able to use it, create some description, and then validate that description as being accurate and on target, which I think is really interesting. So that is the second panel.

Then we roll into Friday, the 27th, and we have a few sessions that day. The first one begins at 11:30 AM, Central time again, and it's audio description and sports. There's been a lot of talk about this in the last couple of years, and in Europe, they're ahead of us when it comes to looking at audio description and sports beyond what I think we've been doing in the US, which is saying, "Well, we have play-by-play for sports. Why do we need audio descriptions?" The moderator of that panel is Paralympian Clark Rachfal, who's the former Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs for the American Council of the Blind. We're going to have with him, Rhys Lloyd, who is the studio head for Descriptive Video Works. They are the company that has been doing for the last several Olympics, the audio description for the Olympics. And I think this is really what pivoted audio description consumers in the US to think that there is more to audio description for sports than just play by play. And if anybody listened to the description of the Olympics, I think you'll understand why, because there's so much emotion, the sublime victory and the thrill of victory and the agony of defeats that we've always heard about.

Carl Richardson
Oh, they don't know about those Saturdays.

Kim Charlson
I know, those commercials, right?

Carl Richardson
Well, the intro to ABC Worldwide Sports.

Kim Charlson
Yeah, exactly.

Alex Howard
We actually had Rhys on the podcast to talk about the Olympics, a lot of our description as well.

Kim Charlson
It's just phenomenal what they did and the amount of coverage that NBC Universal provided for Olympics. And then Comcast did the Gold Zone, which was just giving phenomenal coverage.

Carl Richardson
They did an average of 26 hours a day.

Kim Charlson
So Rhys is going to be great on that panel. We also have Sonali Rai, who is the Senior Manager of Media, Culture, and Immersive Technologies at RNIB in England. And they're very big into audio description in sports, doing it for soccer and that thing.

Carl Richardson
Football, they call it.

Kim Charlson
They call it football, don't they? We call it soccer. And Jerred Mace. Jerred is the CEO of OneCourt, which is new technology that's been discussed quite a bit over the last year or so because it's tactile interface in stadiums right now that's been being introduced to be able to tactically follow the game with a display that OneCourt has developed. And they're also incorporating creating audio description into their equipment. So I'm really excited to learn more about that and to be able to become more an advocate for this technology in sports. And then finally, we have Stasha Boyd, and she's President and Creative Director of Q Media Productions, which is an audio description company, primarily doing tours for historic sites and national parks, but moving into live theater in the central Florida area, and now really quite involved also in a Central Florida University training program there. They have a degree program in sports media, and that program is getting more involved in wanting to understand audio description as it applies to sports.

Carl Richardson
And she's also a member of our Performing Arts Committee.

Kim Charlson
Yes, she definitely is. And then the final panel on Friday, the 27th of June, is a film screening of a documentary film called Telephone. Telephone is a documentary about Krishna Washburn, who's a New York-based artist, audio description consumer, teacher of audio description and dance techniques. She teaches dance and incorporates audio description into her dance training and is just phenomenal in making dance come alive with description and some of the various styles. So they've created a documentary. She and her co-director, Heather Shaw, first will screen the video on Zoom, and then they both will be available after the screening to just add a little commentary and answer questions from the audience. Saturday, the 28th of June, we have two panels. The first one is Audio Description and/or Visual Interpretation Using Artificial Intelligence. How are they different? What do they do, basically? So this one's moderated by Carl, and I'm going to let Carl describe what this panel is going to help us as consumers to understand and hopefully branch out in this area because there's a lot going on here.

Carl Richardson
So this has to do with not necessarily long-form entertainment videos or live performances, but how we can use AI and audio description in our personal lives to help us using live AI. For instance, the Meta glasses now allow you to use live AI, have video streaming and say, "What do I see?" Gemini, which is a product by Google, AI by Google allows you to do this. Open ChatGPT. It might be as simple as saying, "Where are my keys?" Open Live AI and say, "Where are my keys on the table? Can you find them?" Or it could be... I used them recently. I was at a birthday celebration and I had my glasses take a three-minute video of one of my nieces opening a present, but I had no idea what was going on. So later on that night, I played the three-minute video and I had audio descriptions describing what's going on. So how can we use it? Because I have mixed emotions about AI as at the cinematic level, television level, at the professional media level. But I do believe there's room for AI in our personal lives. How can we use it to enhance our daily lives? And that's what we're going to be focusing on, letting you know what technology is there. How can we use it? How can you use your personal device, which most of us carry in our pocket, to give us more information about the world around us? And we have three panelists.

Kim Charlson
Yes,they are--

Yes, thank you.

Cory Kadlik is one of the panelists, and he's the Assistive Technology Manager at the Perkins Library. So he works at my library, and he's very good at that. Michael Babcock, who is an ACB employee and Membership Services Administrative Assistant. He works with ACB Media, but he is super good at tech.

Carl Richardson
And he's well known around the world because he's on many podcasts.

Kim Charlson
He is. He's very involved. And then Jeff Bishop, who is active in ACB and is President of BITS, the Blind Information Technology Specialist, affiliate of ACB. So they'll be demonstrating different apps, like Carl said, Be My AI or Access AI from Aira.

Carl Richardson
Or Pixibot. Or we haven't--

Kim Charlson
Gemini. Or even your own iPhone has an audio description feature now that I accidentally found about a month or so ago. I was in a car and I must have bumped something. And all of a sudden my phone is telling me, "You are going into a parking garage. There is a red Toyota on your right." And I'm like, "What? What happened?" I was so surprised. I didn't know that feature was there. And it was just describing everything as we're going into the parking garage. It was incredible. This is the last session of the virtual conference, and it is on Saturday at 2:30 to 3:45. And it is International Audio Description, A Global Update. And this one is co-sponsored by the Audio Description Project and the ACB International Relations Committee. We will have representatives. It's moderated by Dr. Joel Snyder, who does a lot of international teaching, and he's very active. He has three panelists, one from South Africa, Shakila Maharaj, and she is very involved in audio description in South Africa. Dr. Francisco Lima, he is in Brazil. He's a professor at a university in Brazil and is also very involved there in audio description. Then Johanna Krins, who is involved in Germany with audio description, and Jonny Marshall, who is a colleague of Sonali Rai, who is on the sports panel that I mentioned earlier, and he's the research officer for the Royal National Institute of Blind People in England. They will be talking about international events. One sidebar comment here, Carl and I are currently working on establishing an International Audio Description Coordinating Committee. And this committee will work more globally to advocate for audio description. We're focusing on English language countries because that's what we can do and manage at this point. But we know that a lot of the streaming services are providing a lot of audio description in many other languages: Apple, Netflix, Max, Paramount. Yeah. So there's a lot of availability for audio-described content in other languages besides English. But what we're going to do is begin with that international perspective with English, because almost all of the companies, except for maybe it's some of the smaller indie-type films, most of the major streaming and studio work is happening in the United States. So it's helpful that US blindness organizations take the lead to advocate in this way for more inclusive, expanded audio description and make sure that we work more on coverage when something comes out here. Because we're a global society now, if something comes out here, but it doesn't come out in England or Australia, the blind people in those countries are unhappy because they have to wait longer or vice versa. It does happen the other way sometimes. Not often, but it does. So we're going to start advocating on that level as well. So Carl, do you want to talk a little bit about the in-person part of the conference? July 8th, we've got two sessions around gaming.

Carl Richardson
I may need help with the time, but I can certainly tell you what the panels are. So the first panel will be the gaming panel, where we have industry experts. We have the chair of that committee. Aaron, why don't you know who the panelists are? You can talk about that one, and I'll talk about the second one.

Kim Charlson
Okay. So the first session on July 8th in person in Dallas, and it's hybrid. So there'll be a Zoom component, an audio, and then in-person folks. At 04:00 PM to 05:15 PM Central time is Audio Description and Gaming Accessibility. Aaron Spelker, the chair of our Audio Description Project Gaming Committee, will be moderating that panel. We have some other panelists, including Jenna Jennissary, who is a producer of live and interactive audio description for gaming content. She's with Descriptive Video Works. Jesse Anderson, he's a gaming access consultant, and he's part of the ADP gaming subcommittee. And Charles Pateman, who is a lead voice designer for massive entertainment Ubisoft Studio. So he represents a studio that has produced accessible gaming and has been recognized with an honor from the Audio Description Awards gala that we've been holding for the last four years to recognize and honor industry in their advancement of audio description. We will also have representation from Sony Entertainment, who has also stepped into the audio description gaming space as well. Then immediately after that panel, which is hybrid, will be a panel that is exclusively in-person, which I'll let Carl talk to you about.

Carl Richardson
We want to educate the blindness community on what accessible gaming is, because I'm not sure everybody knows that, yes, we can play video games. And so what we decided to do is let's allow the blind and low vision community to have some hands-on access to how one would play video games. So we're going to have at least three units from Microsoft representing the Xbox platform, and then three units from Sony representing the PlayStation 5 platform, where we hope to have representative, both from Sony and Microsoft there. But if we don't, we'll certainly have representatives from the gaming committee who can show people how to use these devices and the functionality and the excitement, and hopefully gain excitement on playing these devices places. I can't wait to try one because I've been hesitant to spend $500 on a PlayStation 5. That event will decide whether or not I take the plunge. But the purpose of that event is to get people to touch the hardware, play the hardware, see what it's like, and gain momentum and excitement.

Alex Howard
In the first panel, you said people can access that online as well?

Kim Charlson
Yeah, correct. It will have a virtual component for Zoom or ACB Media.

Alex Howard
And is that during the conference or... 

Kim Charlson
It is. It's the live conference that happens July 4th through 11th, and the gaming session is on the afternoon of July 8th.

Alex Howard
8th, yeah. Okay.

Carl Richardson
And then on the 9th, is that right?

Kim Charlson
Yes. The Audio Description Project Awards.

Carl Richardson
Well, yes. Go ahead.

Kim Charlson
That'll be happening on the ninth of July. It's a session in the morning of the ACB Convention, I think around 10:15 or 10:30. So that is a video presentation that will be available on Zoom or in-person, and we will be presenting the awards that we selected as the Audio Description Project for 2025.

Carl Richardson
And then we have something Wicked coming up.

Kim Charlson
Oh, we I do. I think it's Wednesday night, the ninth. We will be viewing, as a fun activity in-person only, Wicked with audio description. So it's an event at the convention where people can sign up and they can go see Wicked with their friends, have popcorn and a soda, and just have that experience if they haven't been able to see it in their own community or on a streaming service.

Alex Howard
And it'll have open audio description?

Kim Charlson
Absolutely, yes.

Carl Richardson
Well, it's going to be open audio description. So anybody going to the event will be exposed to audio description. Whether you're sighted, low vision. It's going to be open for the whole auditorium to enjoy.

Alex Howard
And this is all in Dallas, right?

Kim Charlson
Correct.

Carl Richardson
And then we will be announcing something at one of the events.

Kim Charlson
Oh, you're right. We're going to be opening up the Audio Description People's Choice Awards. It's going to be announced on Sunday, July 6th. We have a session in the morning at 10:45 Central that we will be talking about the Audio Description People's Choice Awards. And then we'll go through and tell you, because we can't tell you now what they are, but that will be announced in July, and it opens up the voting for the Audio Description People's Choice Awards. And we had the nominations. We had the nominations process a month or so ago, a couple of months ago, where people were able to nominate what they felt was their most worthy example of a film within the last 14 months or a series that's on streaming service or broadcast television. So at the convention, we'll be opening up, there'll be online voting that will be available for about two weeks, and you can go in and vote one time for your favorite film and your favorite series. And then after that, in early August, we'll tabulate all of those nominees, and we will have samples during the program of a 30-second clip from each of the nominees for the Audio Description People's Choice award that you'll get to hear, and then you'll be able to go online and vote. And you can also re-listen to any of those clips when you're online on the ballot, because there'll be a link for listen[ing] to the sound clip for this particular film. And then you can vote. And those will all be tabulated. And the winners of the film and series categories for the Audio Description People's Choice Award will be part of the Audio Description Awards Gala, which takes place online on November 14th. Carl is going to talk about that.

Carl Richardson
So the Audio Description Gala, which Alex was part of the nominating committee. And Lee, we're going to find a way to get you involved in the Audio Description Project. Don't worry. I'm thinking you would be a prime candidate for the Performing Arts Committee as a theater goer.

Lee Pugsley
Fully game for that.

Carl Richardson
Okay.

Kim Charlson
That's good.

Carl Richardson
But the Audio Description Gala is a chance to recognize industry to do two things. One, to acknowledge the industry is doing good work in the field of audio description as it pertains to media. And that way, it'll give them a way to compete against themselves and want to do good quality audio description. The other thing is to promote more general awareness beyond that of the blind community community. While the audio description gala is about us because we believe in "nothing about us without us," we now do the gala in sign language and Spanish, with open audio description and open captions. So we try to make it as inclusive as possible. But we also want to bring people in that know nothing about audio description. So it becomes more mainstream, just like captioning does now. Everybody now watches closed captioning. I've seen the numbers, and it's staggering. Because we all have phones in our pockets, and the screens are small and people can't hear, a lot of people use captioning now, and we want to get audio descriptions to the same level. So this gala is a way to both acknowledge people in the industry who are doing quality audio description, have some fun while we're doing it, but at the same time, generate more public awareness.

And like Kim said, it's online. It will be airing on November 14th, and we usually have it so you can watch it in several ways. On YouTube Live, through one of the major streaming services, it's been both on Peacock and Paramount Plus at different times. We don't know where it's going to air yet, but we will most likely have it air on one of those services. Our co-hosts, are usually visually impaired. Our audio describers, meaning our voice talent, is also blind or low vision, and it's just a fun project.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, all of these things are really incredible, just with, once again, the mission you guys have in mind and just the amount of educational resources that you're providing to both the blind and low vision communities, as well as any other community, to just learn and to step into a new walk of life that maybe people aren't familiar with, but maybe they have friends that are visually impaired or blind or are just curious about knowing what resources our community uses. I think that the conference and all of these events that you guys have planned work for audience of any kind, whether blind or sighted. It doesn't matter. There's still something that all of us can learn.

Carl Richardson
We know for a fact, industry does tune in because we've gotten feedback, so that's good. And speaking of educational resources, I'd like to point out where a lot of people could go to learn about all the stuff that Kim and I have mentioned, if that's okay with you.

Lee Pugsley
Absolutely.

Carl Richardson
So we have a website, so that's ADP.ACB.org. And that'll list all the conference information. That'll list all our various subcommittees. But here's what I love about the website. If you want to know what's on TV tonight, you can go to our website and learn what's on TV. If you want to know what's in the theater currently with audio description, you can go to the website and see what's on the theater. If you want to know what's on the different streaming services, you can do that. Right now, and very soon, we will be launching a brand new website, hopefully within the next week or two, where you will be able to, for instance, filter by services, genre, rating. We're very excited about the new filter and capabilities. We currently have over 12,000 titles up there with audio description that you'll be able to filter. And we also put up there news articles about what's going on in the world of audio description and and things like that. So that website will be transitioning to a new, more interactive capability in the next, I would say, next two weeks.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And I think we usually link to the audio description project in our description, and we'll do the same this time as well. And they link to our podcast on their website, too. But the Audio Description Project is fantastic. I mean, I use it all the time when I'm trying to figure out, I want to stream this movie and I want to use audio description, I always search on there. So it's a really helpful tool. And I really encourage any of our listeners who want to get more involved with the blind community, especially the audio description community, to check out some of the panels at the conference and try and get more involved with the American Council for the Blind. I know we have community calls once a month as well that you can be a part of. It's a great community over there.

Carl Richardson
And if you want to register for the conference, if you want to participate and get your own individual Zoom link to go online, you do have to go to ACB.org to register for the conference. Right now, we are open for registration, which reminds me that I have to do it or I won't be able to moderate the panel.

Kim Charlson
That's right.

Alex Howard
Do people have to register or can they download the apps you were talking about and listen that way?

Carl Richardson
Well, if they only want to listen, you can download the app. We can talk ACB Link or play it through the A-Lady device. But if you want to join and have the opportunity to ask a question to the chat, or maybe when we open up the questions, you have to have registered. But anybody can listen free through either the ACB Link app or the A-Lady.

Alex Howard
I don't even know what the A-Lady is. What is that?

Lee Pugsley
It's the Amazon Echo.

Kim Charlson
It is. 

Alex Howard
Ohhhh.

Carl Richardson
Any of the Amazon devices. We just did not want to say-

Kim Charlson
That word.

Lee Pugsley
I have one in my room right now.

Kim Charlson
Exactly. I do, too.

Alex Howard
For reference, though, any time we reference the A-Lady in this podcast episode, it's referring to Amazon Echo, and we all know the name.

Lee Pugsley
Yes.

Carl Richardson
I've actually changed the name just because I'm a Star Trek fan, so all my devices are "Computer."

Alex Howard
That's great.

Lee Pugsley
I love that.

Well, we'll also put a link to the ACB registration link, the ACB link as well in our description below. So for any listener out there that wants to find the links that have mentioned in this podcast episode, go ahead and look in our description.

Carl Richardson
Oh, that's great.

Kim Charlson
Thank you. That's great. 

Alex Howard
Especially, I mean, obviously, I want to encourage all of our listeners to tune in for the theater panel that I'm a part of and that Carl is moderating. Been really excited about that. So please tune in for especially that one.

Carl Richardson
You did ask me earlier, and I forgot, we also have within the media committee, because I know this is a movie podcast about cinephiles, we do have a movie theater subcommittee, which has been not as active as I would like right now for various reasons. But it's a goal to us to create a best practices guide for movie theaters nationwide, and that hasn't been forgotten. And now that we have Randy Smith. Who knows? I might invite him to be on the panel, I mean, on that subcommittee.

Lee Pugsley
For those listeners out there, too, not only should you sign up for these things, but spread the word to anyone and everyone as well. I mean, one of the things we always talk about on this podcast is, it's about creating awareness and educating people that may not be aware of the things out there that exist just so that they can get a more well-rounded picture of what we experience and the ways that we as blind and low vision people experience them. But that only gets out there more if we spread the word to people not in our community as well, to bring them in and to give them the opportunity to learn about all the different things that are involved in our lives.

Kim Charlson
Lee, that reminds me that we also have for the audio description project a general email discussion list, and that's open to anyone who wants to talk about audio description, ask questions, share information, events, any of those things. It's called the ADP List, and you can sign up for that right off of the ADB.ACB.org website. That's a really great place for people to just dip their toe in, start to learn, and get more engaged with other enthusiasts of audio description.

Lee Pugsley
Thank you so much. That's great. And we'll definitely make a note of that as well in our description, too. Well, Carl and Kim, thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you so much for all of the amazing work that you guys are doing to further audio description in all spaces and to equip all of us with resources, education, and various tools. It's really meaningful. The work that both of you guys are doing really goes a long way to make a huge difference, probably more so than you'll ever realize just how far this impact spreads. We're really excited about the conference, about the panel, and just about the other exciting things that you guys are doing. So thank you guys so much.

Carl Richardson
Well, thank you for inviting us.

Kim Charlson
Yeah, thank you. This is just a great opportunity for us to be able to share what we're passionate about as well. So thanks for the invite.

Carl Richardson
This is going to reach an audience that we don't typically reach out to. So this is great.

Alex Howard
Yeah. Thanks for being on. And if any of our listeners have any questions for Carl and Kim or generally for us, you can email us at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. That is DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com.

Lee Pugsley
And you can also follow us on Instagram and subscribe to us on YouTube @DarkRoomFilmCast as well. And we want to take a moment to thank Matt Lauterbach and All Senses Go for making transcripts of this episode and all of our other episodes possible, and also to BlindCAN for supporting us in our editing as well. So, yeah, just go ahead and go to the ACB website to get in contact with people over there. And thank you guys so much for listening. We'll see you back here next time on The Dark Room.

Alex Howard
Thanks, guys. Take care.