Breaking barriers for the blind in film
SHAKILA Maharaj, a KwaZulu-Natal entrepreneur, is breaking down barriers to making the visual world more accessible to blind people.
Maharaj, a disability rights activist, will soon launch the ShazaCin app. It is aimed at making films and TV more accessible to the blind through audio description. The qualified organisational psychologist is blind herself and relates to the challenges.
She has 40 years of experience in the disability sector and 10 years in audio description and research.
Maharaj was born sighted. An incident during her childhood damaged her optical nerve and this resulted in her losing her sight in her twenties.
She said audio description was an internationally recognised art form and an access tool for the visually impaired.
“Understanding the visual world is essential for our effective functioning. Descriptions of spatial dimension, shape, colour, size, foreground, background and movement create images in our minds that help us to contextualise our world. This supports our development and social integration.”
Maharaj said many blind people watched TV or attended the cinema but never got the full experience.
“We listen to the audio and try to piece the storyline together or ask family and friends to describe what’s happening to achieve the full experience. In cinemas, this often irritates others.”
She said audio description was a narrator that aesthetically described and filled the gaps.
“How we convey this visual world to a blind person is where the skill of audio description comes in. Professional audio description transforms the visual experience, providing a total understanding.”
Being blind, Maharaj realised that accessibility was a challenge on many levels. She started ShazaCin Accessible Media, supported by SmartXchange, with the objective of introducing new blood and training young people in the field of audio description.
Maharaj said audio description training was essential.
“You have to have a good command of the language and know how to use words concisely and correctly. We assign a trained sighted person to script the visuals and we quality-control and edit these scripts several times. Throughout the process, we have blind people involved to verify the audio description.
“The description must make sense and provide an imaginative experience for us. We select a suitable voice artist, and direct and record the script. At the end of this process, we take the mastered audio description track and integrate it into the video soundtrack of the TV or film production.”
She said getting TV and film producers on board to incorporate audio description in their budgets was a challenge. This, she said, was because they were unaware of the market and value it brought.
“Research shows on average 80% of people with disabilities become disabled in the course of their life and 20% are disabled from birth. There are more than 400 000 in South Africa with visual disabilities and this does not even include ageing persons.”
Maharaj realised the potential of audio description several years ago. She trained in the US and started pioneering it in South Africa.
“We trained more than 100 visually disabled and sighted people in the country, and still continue today. Audio description has become increasingly known in the industry.”
In 2016, her company created an isiZulu audio description for a 13-episode telenovela, Sticks and Stones, that was screened on SABC 1.
Recently, her company worked on three projects for the Sub-Saharan partner to Netflix (Seriously Single, Riding with Sugar and Kings of Joburg).
An agreement with the KZN Film Commission (KZNFC) has resulted in the company working on nine local films in English and isiZulu.
Maharaj said the development of the mobile app ShazaCin would take audio description to the next level and provide a total solution. It removes the cost for broadcasters and cinemas to have the expensive infrastructure for audio description, she said.
“ShazaCin listens to the video on the external device – TV, cinema, or computer – and it synchronises the matching audio description from its data bank to the video playing. The blind person listens to the audio descriptions independently through earphones on their cellphones. It’s like having our own private describer.”
She said that the KZNFC supporting film-makers with the budget for audio description of their films via this project had paved the way in the industry.
“Eight film-makers have come forward and embraced audio description. The films comprise
and
“In addition to this, we were already working on two classic films, and White Gold. We are grateful for the support of the KZNFC and the local film-makers for being willing to allow us to develop the audio description for their productions and making them accessible to blind viewers.”
The objective is to complete the audio description on all these films by the next month and for an audio description film festival to be held.
“Through this, we intend to promote awareness with the public and the industry. Currently, no company specialises in this field in Africa, and we want to be able to say that anyone who is doing a film in Africa can look to us as an agency to develop the audio description for their productions.”
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