VANCOUVER – Popular CTV series So You Think You Can Dance Canada is the first live reality television show in North America to be described for the blind and visually impaired.
Still a relatively new service in Canada and the U.S., described video (DV) is to the blind and visually impaired, what closed captioning is to the deaf. It provides a descriptive narrative of the key visual elements in television programs and other visual media to make them more accessible to people with visual disabilities. On a secondary audio track, a trained narrator provides the vocal description of the action within the natural pauses in the dialogue. A full DV mix consisting of the main program audio combined with these narrated descriptions is accessible through most TVs and VCRs via the secondary audio program.
“This was truly exciting for us to be approached by CTV to break this ground by providing the first live reality television for the visually impaired,” said Diane Johnson, CEO of Descriptive Video Works, who provided the descriptive video service for the show. “The feedback from the blind and vision impaired audience has been extremely positive and we’re pleased to take described video to new heights. We’re proud to partner with CTV to provide an enhancement for a show of this calibre.”
