For a few years now, the Association has been pushing for the introduction of audio description into New Zealand television. Our old analog system of television broadcasting does not lend itself to audio description, so we have had to go without while we knew that blind people in many other countries have had at least some audio described television for more than twenty years. Some countries now mandate a minimum number of hours a week that all major broadcasters must provide.

But now with the Freeview digital TV service up and running in New Zealand, we believe it is possible.

For a few years now, the Association has been pushing for the introduction of audio description into New Zealand television. Our old analog system of television broadcasting does not lend itself to audio description, so we have had to go without while we knew that blind people in many other countries have had at least some audio described television for more than twenty years. Some countries now mandate a minimum number of hours a week that all major broadcasters must provide.

But now with the Freeview digital TV service up and running in New Zealand, we believe it is possible.

That’s why we’ve been pushing this issue in the last few years, because now with the new Freeview service, we should be able to get audio described programmes in much the same way as the deaf community has captioned programmes. Captioning has been around in New Zealand for nearly thirtty years, so we have some catching up to do.

This week our efforts have resulted in a break-through. New Zealand On Air, the Government agency responsible for funding public broadcasting, publicly announced that it has allocated $500,000 this financial year to pay for at least a small amount of audio described programming. This clears the way now for TVNZ to complete the necessary technical preparations and start importing audio described versions of some popular programmes. Once that is done, we should have our first audio described television broadcasts on Freeview, and we hope this will happen within the next six months. Audio described versions of local programmes will come later.

Have you ever watched a TV programme and wondered what the heck is going on? Great if you’ve got someone with you who can see and who doesn’t mind explaining what’s happening. That is what audio description is; a voice that quietly tells you what’s happening on the screen. This voice is broadcast as part of the programme itself. You just push a button on your Freeview remote, and, if the programme you are watching has an audio description, you will start to hear that extra voice telling you what’s happening, while making sure not to talk over the top of the dialogue. So as I said, it looks now like we will have at least some audio described programmes on TV in the near future.

I myself and quite a few other blind people I know have really got quite seriously into enjoying the expanding range of audio described movies now available, so there are quite a few of us who know what it is. Others have not experienced it at all and may in fact be thinking that television really doesn’t have much to offer us. Don’t forget though, the vast majority of blind people were once sighted and many people really miss the movies and TV programmes they used to love. That’s why we believe audio description will become as important to the blind community in New Zealand as captioning is to the deaf community. Not many people have switched to Freeview as yet but there will come a time when we will all have to because the old analog service will be turned off in the next few years. So it won’t be long before everyone has Freeview and that means everyone potentially will be able to switch on the audio description if they want it. The census figures tell us that some 75,000 New Zealanders identify as having a vision impairment. All these people can benefit from audio description.

There’s no need to rush out and buy a Freeview box just yet, well not unless you really want to. Best to wait I think until we know more about exactly how it will work.

At last there is real money on the table for the first time to pay for this. And this is a wonderful achievement given the current echonomic squeeze, and how much Government is cutting back in so many areas. So we have publicly expressed our appreciation to New Zealand On Air for coming up with the goods and to TVNZ for the preparations they have already made. We will keep working with them now to keep making progress and we’ll let you know more when there is more news.

And what about Sky? Well we haven’t forgotten about Sky. We think once audio description is truly a reality in New Zealand, the pressure will go on to all broadcasters to offer some audio described programming. We recognise the value of audio description to Sky subscribers because of the many current movies available on Sky, and many of these are already audio described. We also know for what it’s worth (and it may not be much) that Sky does broadcast audio described programmes in the UK. So you can be sure we will soon be turning our attention to Sky. And if anyone from Sky is reading this, as the saying goes, it’s time to “get with the programme”.