Los Angeles, August 26 – For the low vision and blind communities, audio description (AD) is the equivalent to captions for the Hard of Hearing and Deaf communities. It is often the most misunderstood and underutilized accessibility asset in the broadcast TV, cable, digital media, gaming and film industries. Professionals and advocates within the audio description industry are far from scarce, however, and participants of RespectAbility’s Summer Lab for Entertainment Professionals with Disabilities were lucky enough to speak to some of the best: Michele Spitz and Alex Howard.
Michele Spitz of Woman of Her Word is a voiceover artist, audio description (AD) consultant and educator, public speaker, and philanthropist dedicated to selectively funding AD and post-production accessibility grants to ensure that media content is equally accessible to low vision and blind audiences. With more than 8 years of experience across multiple cities, film festivals, and industry platforms, Spitz’s AD work can be heard in Emmy and the Academy Award nominated films to museums and award-winning independent films like Best Summer Ever. Spitz encouraged all Lab participants to have a common base knowledge of media accessibility overall. [continue reading…]