Remarkable World Commentary Episode #117: Interview with Joel Snyder, President, Audio Description Associates, LLC

🌐 Also available in: Français

In this illuminating episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan welcomes Joel Snyder, who takes listeners back to his years as a volunteer reader at the Metropolitan Washington Ear and explains how audio description began. Joel credits Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl, the blind founder of the Washington Ear, and Chet Avery, a blind man at the Department of Education, with the idea that grew into the first professionally described theater production, Major Barbara at Arena Stage in the summer of 1981, and he credits Gregory Frazier, whose San Francisco master’s thesis he says was the first published work on the subject. He traces description from live theater to television with WGBH, then to DVDs, movie theaters and streaming services, and points listeners to the American Council of the Blind’s Audio Description Project at https://adp.acb.org.

Donna and Joel also talk about how his training as an actor shapes his teaching, with observation as the first of his four fundamentals of audio description, and why he says the best compliment a describer can get is “I forgot you were there.” Joel looks back on his 20 years at the National Endowment for the Arts and his work describing Sesame Street at the National Captioning Institute, and he shares the stories of a blind mother following Sesame Street with her children and a young blind girl who asked Fred Rogers to say aloud when he fed his fish. Looking ahead, he predicts description built into productions from the start and delivered through smartphone apps, and he mentions his book, The Visual Made Verbal, which he says is now in print in seven languages.

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Commentator: [upbeat digital music] Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, and MBA invites you to listen to her bi-weekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology, and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Remarkable World Commentary. I’m Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch, and stubborn optimism. I am a law graduate, an accessibility consultant, author, lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just to sighted ones. And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen disability groups to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was tremendously humbled by Her Late Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: When I’m not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio, you’ll find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal, and that is to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience, and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, before we jump into today’s conversation, let me shine a quick spotlight on today’s guest, a change maker whose work is as every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I am pleased and I am tremendously privileged to welcome Joel Snyder to our Remarkable World Commentary podcast for today. Welcome, Joel.

Joel Snyder: Thank you, Donna. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: All right. So let’s get right into things then. Joel, long before anyone called this a profession, you were a volunteer reader at the Metropolitan Washington Ear reading the Sunday Washington Post aloud.

Joel Snyder: [laughs] That’s right, for about 10 years.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, and somewhere in there you started describing the comics the way Mayor La Guardia once did on the radio. I want you to take me back to that studio. What made you start describing the pictures instead of just reading the words?

Joel Snyder: [laughs] Well, in the ’70s, indeed I was a volunteer for the Metropolitan Washington Ear, a radio reading service. And volunteers took turns reading different newspapers and magazine articles and short stories and that sort of thing for this radio reading service on a frequency that was accessible via a particular receiver that people who are blind primarily used. And it was great fun, a great learning experience for me as a young voice talent and actor and such.

Joel Snyder: And it really occurred to all of us as we’re reading newspapers, newspapers are chock-full of photographs and graphic advertisements and such, and if we’re gonna make the newspaper accessible, we can’t just read the text, just like Mayor La Guardia did in the ’40s. He was reading the comics to the people of New York City. Couldn’t just read the text. You gotta describe the images.

Joel Snyder: And all of us as volunteers there were not struggling with it really, but we realized that that’s certainly something we needed to do. But there was no kind of best practices or guidelines of standards for doing description. We just did it. People have been describing things since prehistoric times.

Joel Snyder: But it was a little bit later, in about 1980, when the woman who founded the Washington Ear, its director, Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl, a blind woman, she was on a committee at Arena Stage, the professional repertory theater in Washington, DC. A committee to advise them on accessibility, which in 1980, that wasn’t done very often. But they had convened the committee partly on the occasion of having installed an assisted listening system. So yeah, also very new. They’re ubiquitous now, but this was their installed, to help people who had hearing loss hear what’s going on.

Joel Snyder: Well, Margaret was on that committee, a blind woman, along with another gentleman from the Department of Education, Chet Avery, a blind man, and both of them thought this system was wonderful, but they also both wondered, “Well, gee, what do you have for us? We’re blind. We don’t have hearing.”

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness.

Joel Snyder: So they theorized as they learned about the system, it’s just a microphone on a stage and that connects to some sort of transmitter, and the sound is received by people wearing headsets in the audience. You can crank up the volume.

Joel Snyder: So they wondered if, well, if it’s just a microphone on stage, maybe you could have two channels and the second channel could be used by a person with a second microphone. Why couldn’t that happen? Maybe somebody off stage, maybe using the pauses in between bits and pieces of dialogue or critical sound elements, just let us know what’s going on. What action in particular. But of course, there might be description of facial expressions, the settings, costumes and such as time allows.

Joel Snyder: And at the stage, they thought, “Well, gee, we’ve never heard of that before.” And Margaret and Chet both felt like, “Well, yeah, we haven’t heard it before either. We just made it up.” But could it work possibly? And so Arena Stage agreed and said, “Well, Margaret, you’ve got a radio station. Maybe you can get some folks together and figure out how we would do this.”

Joel Snyder: And Margaret grabbed me, I was already an English teacher and professional actor and voice talent, and a couple of others, and we began to hammer this out. What would we even call it? Well, it’s an aural experience. Audio, audio description. That’s what we’ll do.

Joel Snyder: And we worked on it for about a year, and in the summer of 1981, the very first professional theater presentation with audio description debuted. Major Barbara, the play by Shaw, at Arena Stage with audio description. And I should add quickly, though, that the idea of doing this as a service accompanying a dramatic production or a film or video occurred to a fellow in San Francisco, to Gregory Frazier, in the mid-1970s. He did a master’s thesis on this topic.

Joel Snyder: He had a good friend who was blind, and I think he was a little tired of always having to describe movies to his friend. And he thought, “This should just be something available.” He wrote a master’s thesis called An All Audio Adaptation of the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a great film with Cicely Tyson. And so that was his master’s thesis back in, I think it was ’78, ’77.

Joel Snyder: And in mid-’80s, he went on to develop a service just like we had in Washington, but this is in San Francisco, a service called AudioVision doing description for live performance. And both of the services are still around and doing description at different kinds of performing arts events, especially dance, theater, opera. And then it went on from there.

Joel Snyder: 1985, we collaborated with WGBH in Boston to actually start doing this for television. We did a pilot for them, which was very successful. I actually wrote and voiced three of the very first television programs ever broadcast in this country, certainly, with audio description. So then it began to get publicized and took off from there. It took a little while to start getting it on DVDs, or actually first came VHS videotape. [laughs] Remember those?

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Yes.

Joel Snyder: Which was not the ideal format because you couldn’t turn it on or off. You either had it on that tape, but with DVDs, you could turn it on and off, that sort of thing. And then it started bubbling around on television and our FCC started considering whether that this should be joined with captioning, for instance. Captioning was already required on broadcast television. So that started to bubble, and movie theaters started to realize that they needed to make their presentations accessible.

Joel Snyder: But the movie theater itself, they’re just showing movies from Hollywood. So Hollywood needed to start thinking about doing captioning and doing audio description so that now just about every feature film that comes out has an audio description track. We’ve come a long way. And then finally streaming came about more recently. And it took some persuading, but now Netflix, Amazon, Disney, others who stream, who have these streaming services for entertainment, they’re doing it in 12, 15 languages around the world.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Whoa.

Joel Snyder: Yeah. So in a nutshell, that’s kind of the recent history of audio description [laughs] in the United States. Canada has been a real player though as well. In fact, well, I remember there was a group called AudioVision Canada that I think morphed into, graduated into other services in Canada, but they actually experimented with taking public domain films, just dubbing out from the film just the audio track and then mixing it with audio description. And they started issuing audio cassettes that were audio films, essentially, which I still have a few of them.

Joel Snyder: It didn’t go very far. It wasn’t marketed perhaps as well as it could be, but I’m still trying to convince Hollywood to— They own the description. They own the films. Why not issue audio versions of the film with audio description? And you have an audio film that I think would sell to sighted people who wanna re-experience a film in their car or at the theater. So that’s on the horizon, hopefully.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Whoa. What a whirlwind journey for you, huh?

Joel Snyder: And there you go. It’s true. It’s true. I’ve been working with it now almost 46 years.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, in the summer of 1981 at Arena Stage in Washington is the moment that field usually points to Margaret, okay?

Joel Snyder: Right, Margaret Pfanstiehl.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Pfanstiehl. And Chet Avery.

Joel Snyder: Yes. That’s right.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right? An assistant listening system meant for hard of hearing patrons. And a production of Major Barbara. You were in the room. Tell our listeners what actually happened. And what it felt like to be doing something nobody had a name for as yet. Tell us.

Joel Snyder: That’s right. Well, I guess we didn’t really know that we were doing something that was groundbreaking or that would expand or— We just wanted to try it with theater, and we did. And it worked out pretty well. Radio reading services, pretty much all of them follow a volunteer model. Like I said, I was a volunteer reader.

Joel Snyder: And the description for performing arts basically assumed that model, so that volunteers would develop the description based on a couple of viewings, two or three viewings of a play. And then at certain performances, maybe one or two performances out of a six-week run, we would provide the audio description. And it was, again, volunteer based. You didn’t wanna have to charge the theaters much, if anything at all.

Joel Snyder: And you’re using volunteers, so you can’t really say, “Well, we need you to be at every performance and be available and all of that.” And that’s changing a little bit because I think people who are blind have a right to access any and every performance of a performing arts piece. They should be able to go up to the box office and say, “I’d like a ticket for tonight. Oh, I need the audio description, please.” And be able to access it. So there are different ways to try to accomplish that and we’re working on that.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Interesting. Now, you are very often introduced as the father of audio description. But yet in your own tellings, you consistently hand the credit to Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl?

Joel Snyder: Oh, Pfanstiehl. Absolutely.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: A blind woman.

Joel Snyder: That’s right. Listen, description is not just for blind people. It’s by blind people. It was developed by Margaret. In fact, nowadays with media, some of the best quality control consultants are people who are blind, who know audio description. They contribute to the writing of the description. Some of the best voice talents are people who are totally blind. And some of the best audio editors are people who are totally blind. So—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Really?

Joel Snyder: It’s absolutely critical that it be understood as an activity that folks who are blind are very much a part of.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, why does it matter so much to you that the record shows a blind woman at the origin of this field?

Joel Snyder: Well, that is the fact of the matter. [laughs] I wasn’t on the committee at Arena Stage. Chet Avery is sometimes overlooked a little bit. It wasn’t called the Department of Education in those days. I think it was Health and Human Services, something like that. But he was actually a blind man overseeing funding for captioning.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh my Lord.

Joel Snyder: He had the idea back in the ’60s really, what if we had, he called it audio captions for film or television that would clue people into what’s going on. People who are blind primarily. Other populations benefit as well. And the idea just never took hold. In fact, there were some folks in the blind community who would say, “Well, we don’t really need that. That would be a crutch. We will not have to depend on that. We can get along just listening to the audio. And what’s more important is having initiatives that will build employment for blind people,” which my goodness, is certainly true.

Joel Snyder: But other things other than the arts or television, we’re getting on fine with it. Most blind people watch, quote unquote, television by listening to what’s going on, and so much is communicated by sound. We don’t need it. And—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: New notification from Audible.

Joel Snyder: Thank goodness, and there are still some organizations and folks certainly in this country who still feel a little bit like, “Eh, it’s not a priority. It’s a nice thing to have.” But certainly the American Council of the Blind here has been a real advocate and supporter for audio description.

Joel Snyder: About 17 years ago, I worked with them to found the Audio Description Project, which is an initiative ACB. And we have a website that lists everything that we know of that’s described, museums, theaters, every film, every television show. And we have, oh golly, we have contests for blind kids, where they write reviews of the described videos. We have conferences and awards and training institutes. So it’s grown a great deal.

Joel Snyder: But if I may, the website is simply ADP, Audio Description Project, https://adp.acb.org. Yeah, https://adp.acb.org. And really, everything you wanted to know about audio description is there.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow. Oh my God.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, you also go out of your way to credit Gregory Frazier, who was writing about all audio adaptation, San Francisco stage, back in the mid-1970s, and went on to build AudioVision. Most people have never heard his name.

Joel Snyder: Yeah, I think he wrote—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But why do you keep saying it? And what did his lineage on the West Coast contribute that the Washington story alone doesn’t capture?

Joel Snyder: Well, he was the first. He did, as I say, a master’s thesis. He was the first person to really sit down on paper and publish ideas about the act and the art of audio description.

Joel Snyder: And I have my own PhD that is focused on audio description, where it’s— In Europe, it’s studied, and master’s degrees and PhDs are obtainable because it’s a kind of audiovisual translation. And really in this country, in the world, as far as I know, and I wrote a book about this, The Visual Made Verbal, as far as I know, Gregory was the first to actually publish something that referenced what we call now as audio description.

Joel Snyder: Gregory wasn’t all that involved with its development on television and film, because he— Well, he was in San Francisco, and of course so much film comes out of Los Angeles. And it was really the brainchild of WGBH in Boston, where they heard about what we were doing, and they realized that with broadcast television, even back in analog days, there was a secondary audio program feature with stereo televisions, SAP.

Joel Snyder: And that would be the ideal way to transmit this second audio track. It was there for Spanish translation. And even today, most usually on weekends with sports events, you’ll hear Spanish translation, which means you will not hear description. [laughs]

Joel Snyder: And you would think in this day and age, with everything digital, technically there’s capacity to have a dozen different audio tracks, but it just hasn’t happened yet. So that’s another goal for us because there should be— There’s room to have audio description in English, audio description in Spanish, translation in Spanish, and other languages as well.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Ring. Woo.

Joel Snyder: Yeah. Lots of stuff going on.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, what I didn’t know until I was prepping for this interview is that you have been an actor since you were about seven years old.

Joel Snyder: Oh, goodness. Yeah. [laughs]

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And you still perform.

Joel Snyder: Yeah. Yeah, no, I—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I want to ask you about the craft rather than the policy for a moment.

Joel Snyder: Ah, thank you.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What does training as a performer give a describer that no amount of writing skills can substitute? Four. Tell me.

Joel Snyder: Yeah, that is great. Thank you, Donna, for mentioning that. I’ve been a equity member, Actors’ Equity Association for over 50 years. I train describers all around the world, some 60 countries now, and most of the United States. Canada, of course. I’m probably the only person offering training who hearkens back to training for actors. There’s a classic text called The First Six Lessons of Acting by Richard Boleslavsky. And two of those lessons are concentration and observation.

Joel Snyder: And I developed what I teach and in my book, the four fundamentals of audio description, and observation is the first one. An audio describer has to observe, has to be an active seer, one who sees. And so does an actor, because you’re reproducing on stage what you’ve observed around the world. And you only do that to the extent that you’re able to really concentrate on what is out there. So I trace this right back to acting training.

Joel Snyder: And then of course, audio description, 99% of it is voiced aloud. So it’s helpful to be able to voice in a way that makes meaning, makes it clear, makes it understandable and clear. So those skills come into play as well. Now some people, [laughs] some people, Donna, will say, “Oh, I have a friend who’s an actor. He’s got a beautiful voice. He’d be a great audio describer.”

Joel Snyder: And maybe he would, but audio describing is about the crafting of the language. And then it has to be voiced, and that’s a voice talent or a narrator, if you will. Or some people say they’re performing the audio description. I shy away from that word, really, because the best compliment an audio description— after a performance at a live theater, best compliment that the describer can get is, “I forgot you were there.” You know?

Joel Snyder: For live theater, it’s almost always the same person who crafts the description is voicing it. In movies, it’s different. In movies, it’s described somewhere and then it’s voiced somewhere else, that sort of thing. But actors wanna be in the spotlight. Goodness, I know that.

Joel Snyder: And when you voice audio description, again, I think the point is to disappear. The consumer gets everything, but forgets that you were there because nobody goes to a play or a film to hear the audio describer. They experience the film or the play. And our job is to, with the writing and with the voicing, to be inconspicuous, to be in consonance with what’s going on. But don’t— You’re not in the play, you’re not in the movie, you are of the play, of the movie. And that’s the distinction that I think is important.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, I wrote three seasons of The Detective DJ and the Crime Crushers.

Joel Snyder: Oh my goodness.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I commentated it. I audioed it. I did everything for it.

Joel Snyder: Fantastic.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I’m [laughs] fairly sure it could’ve been made better if I had known you at that time, [laughs] you know?

Joel Snyder: [laughs] We’d be a great team, that’s right.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, yeah. So you spent 20 years at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982 to 2002, and you served as acting director of its Inter-Arts Program.

Joel Snyder: Inter-Arts Program, that’s right. With—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: More than once.

Joel Snyder: What they called presenting program, et cetera. Yeah.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, what did two decades inside a federal arts agency teach you about how change actually happens in large institutions, and did it make you more patient or less patient? Be honest. [laughs]

Joel Snyder: Well, the period that I was there, ’82 to ’02, was oftentimes referred, at least certainly the ’90s, referred to as the culture wars. And we had congressmen really trying to defund the NEA because they felt we were funding things that were not part of the mainstream and that that should be our mission. And I, of course, and others felt like, well, no, that’s what the commercial sector does. Funding should be about the art form and what’s advancing the art form, not necessarily what’s commercial. So we went through that certainly, and still going through that really.

Joel Snyder: And unfortunately, the Arts Endowment is a shell of its former self these days. But it was quite a ride for about 20 years, and that’s how I earned the bulk of my living. I was also doing acting, but I didn’t make a living in audio description until 2002, when I left the Endowment, and have ever since, which is just great.

Joel Snyder: But the Endowment— Everybody in a country, I think, has the right to access culture. And I think every theater, every orchestra, every dance company, et cetera, has the right to be as inclusive as possible. And that doesn’t necessarily make money. For those entities. So funding by government sources, by corporations and foundations, by individuals is so important.

Joel Snyder: And indeed the services themselves that help build inclusivity like audio description, like captioning, like sign language interpretation, those services I think are appropriate for public funding, and funding from the other sources as well certainly. But it’s a bit of a slog, especially these days, certainly in the United States where there’s been a bit of an emphasis on cutting back services and government funds. I think Canada’s in a better way these days, certainly.

Joel Snyder: And you have a Ministry of Culture, whereas we have— the comparable agency is the National Endowment for the Arts. But most countries in Europe have a Ministry of Culture that functions in the same way, providing some funding. The difference in America, and this is an important one, is that our tax structure allows for contributions from individuals and corporations. When an individual contributes to an arts organization that is officially a non-profit organization or in other countries referred to as an NGO, when anybody contributes, they’re able to take credit for that off their taxes.

Joel Snyder: And that’s a big incentive and certainly results in funding far greater than the modest budget of the NEA. And there are also, I believe all 50 states have a state arts agency. And indeed, I’m in the State of Maryland and served on the Maryland State Arts Council for two years. And they also play an important role with state government money primarily. They get money from the National Endowment for the Arts as well. And there are local arts agencies that also are part of that distribution mechanism.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: This is all so new to me and very interesting, you know. But when you left the NEA and went straight into building described media program at the Na—

Joel Snyder: Right, at National Captioning Institute. That’s right.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, yeah. And description started reaching national television, including Sesame Street.

Joel Snyder: That’s it. [laughs]

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What was it like moving from describing a live stage to describing broadcast media? And what did you have to unlearn, as they would say?

Joel Snyder: Well, I always thought that description will not really take off until it’s in media, until it’s on television and with movies and such. And that has proved to be true. Yeah, we were the first folks to provide description for Sesame Street. And I must say back in those days in the 2000s, and still today actually, the federal government does provide some funding for the description on television for educational media.

Joel Snyder: And we used that funding to offer audio description, for instance, to the Children’s Television Workshop that produced Sesame Street. And that was great fun to do, and it still is being described and captioned as well. And it’s important, as I mentioned, little kids who are blind or have low vision benefit a great deal from that.

Joel Snyder: In fact, a quick story, Donna. When I was doing Sesame Street, we got a letter from a 45-year-old blind woman who wanted to compliment us on Sesame Street. And I thought, “Well, that’s— It’s nice, but that program’s for three to five-year-olds.” Well, it turns out that she was congenitally blind. And she loved Sesame Street when she was a child just listening to the funny voices and the music and the sounds and such.

Joel Snyder: Well, now she was moved to write to us because she had two sighted children. And she could for the first time follow along with her kids the antics of Bert and Ernie and Elmo and all the other denizens of Sesame Street. So that was really a heartwarming letter we received from a blind woman, as I say.

Joel Snyder: And there’s the other story too, that you may have heard, another program that was really right up there almost as popular as Sesame Street, but Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Have you heard of that one?

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Yes, I have.

Joel Snyder: Fred Rogers, which, just a wonderful program, very different than Sesame Street, but much beloved. And there’s a reason why Fred Rogers would always out loud say when he was feeding his fish on his little living room set there. He got a letter from a five-year-old blind girl, Cathy, who said, “Would you do that, please? Because I can’t see if you’re feeding your fish, and I really wanna know that the fish are being taken care of.”

Joel Snyder: And the papa added a note, said, “Yes, Cathy is blind, and she really does cry if you don’t say you are feeding the fish.” So Fred Rogers added in a little bit of description, kind of built it into the show, which is wonderful, in honor of this child who wrote to him.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. I wonder if you ever thought of doing, or maybe you have, doing any audio description for one of my favorite shows growing up, The Flintstones. Did you?

Joel Snyder: That’s great. No, I haven’t. I’ve done various cartoon shows. Animated programs. Not The Flintstones, though.

Joel Snyder: Another one that I would love to hear described, I was always a big fan of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. And [laughs] in fact, I even went to them at one point, the people that own the show now, and said, “I’ll do it for free. You know? Let’s figure out a way to get description.” And that never happened. And The Flintstones, it may have description. I don’t know. I’ve never done it.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I’ve never heard of it either, but that was my favorite cartoon growing up.

Joel Snyder: Sure. Sure. Absolutely.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What would it sound like for you to describe the antics of Fred and Barney and Wilma and Betty?

Joel Snyder: Well, so much is happening visually there. Right from their clothes. Kind of cave people clothes. Kind of animal hide basically, but with color and designs and such. And then there’s the car that they used to use. Which was a human-powered car. They were puttering along by just using their legs basically, cranking the car. Funny things like that. And then there was their pet Dino—

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Dino and Bamm-Bamm and—

Joel Snyder: Bamm-Bamm the child.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Fred’s apples.

Joel Snyder: That’s right. Lots of great things that could be described there, and made more vivid, more meaningful for kids.

Joel Snyder: The soundtracks are great, and blind people grow up listening to soundtracks of shows. And oftentimes description is compared to radio theater, and I understand that comparison, although radio theater assumes everybody is blind and we have to fill in the visual with sound effects. So they don’t narrate those actions. You hear footsteps and so you know somebody’s walking, for instance.

Joel Snyder: So I sort of liken audio description perhaps to really high quality sports play-by-play on radio. Some radio commentators are just brilliant. They’re just born describers. And they have to be. Nobody’s seeing anything. They’re broadcasting on the radio. So yeah, I think that’s probably an even more apt comparison.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: As a ice hockey enthusiast, I always marveled at how these guys on the radio— And I could picture myself actually being rink-side, you know? Oh, my lord.

Joel Snyder: Well, a not so widely known story is about former President Ronald Reagan. He began as a sports announcer in Illinois. And there is the story about his broadcasting play-by-play for a baseball game going on in New York City, and he was in Illinois.

Joel Snyder: So he was getting on a ticker tape information about what was going on. Ball one, strike one. Foul ball. And he would take that data without seeing the game. He would describe a game. He would just make it up and very imaginatively create the game with words. Even though he wasn’t seeing the game [laughs] he just had the raw data essentially. So no matter what you may think of Mr. Reagan’s politics, he was an imaginative broadcaster early in his career.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I agree with you. I mean, I did follow some of his politics, but I think this is another new disclosure that I never knew about Mr. Reagan. Wow.

Joel Snyder: Well, I mention that in my book. If I may do a little plug, The Visual Made Verbal: A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description. And I’m quite proud that it’s available in braille. It’s available in two different audiobook versions. And it’s now in print in seven languages with eighth one on the way. So it’s a little dated. It’s time for a second edition, I think. It’s about 13 years old. But that’s a project for me.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, the clock is telling me it’s almost time to go. But I wanted to ask you, give me some predictions as to what the future would be for audio description. What can I look forward to, as an adult especially? But I have a kid’s heart, too, you know? Yeah. Tell us. Tell our listeners.

Joel Snyder: Well, I guess a couple of things. I look forward to having audio description be incorporated within productions from the very beginning. Having, in different ways. Perhaps a playwright can write a script so that it’s descriptive as you go along. And you don’t have to add description to it. Or maybe a describer is embedded within the cast and provides description on stage or develops a script and is available to voice it at every performance, something like that.

Joel Snyder: I would steer your listeners to Stevie Wonder’s music video, So What the Fuss. When he wrote that song and then of course as folks did, I guess still today, make a music video of the song. Well, he decided that’s gonna be described, you know? And I cannot experience that song without listening to his friend Busta Rhymes, a rapper, voice the description that Stevie Wonder and WGBH wrote for the thing. You can find it easily on the internet. So What the Fuss by Stevie Wonder.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: My Lord. [laughs]

Joel Snyder: Oh, it’s a great piece. And then the other thing in particular is about the transmission of audio description. In live theater and in movie theaters, and even at home, I think the smartphone is gonna become central to the transmission of audio description. Already, for film, and if that film is on television, there are about a half dozen apps available around the world that you can download to your phone, and then you download to that app the audio description track for a film.

Joel Snyder: So if you’re in the movie theater or you’re at home and the movie comes on, you click that app on, start play, and the app listens to the original soundtrack coming from your television or in the movie theater and will automatically feed to you through your own earbuds the audio description. So you could be doing it at home and your family doesn’t need to hear the audio description, but you’re getting it, you know? And you can use your own smartphone, your own earbuds in the movie theater. You don’t have to be worrying about the movie theater maintaining equipment, that kind of thing. That will become more ubiquitous I think.

Joel Snyder: And in live theater it’s very rare, live events, but that’s coming along as well. I’ve been working with a software company in Salzburg, Austria, called LiveVoice, and that needs to happen in live settings more often. So I see that on the horizon as well.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Joel, it has been a pleasure having you.

Joel Snyder: Oh, thank you, Donna.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I mean it. I’ve learned so much in the last few minutes. I’d like to offer you also the opportunity to write a brief article or a blog or an editor, whatever you want to call it. It’s all about my trying to promote how different people are breaking down barriers.

Joel Snyder: Okay, great.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And what I will do, I will not edit your article or your blog or whatever, but I will simply post it to our website and we circulate it.

Joel Snyder: Wonderful.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I will be sending you an invitation in the next week or so. Interested?

Joel Snyder: Oh, I would be happy to.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, we thought. Okay.

Joel Snyder: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, and when is your podcast made available and how can folks— So I wanna get the word out about the podcast.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, yeah. This is prerecorded and my associate Aaron Di Blasi, he takes care of all the editing and all the technical stuff. And I think within a few days you will receive notification that it’s out there, and it is circulated to thousands and thousands of global listeners.

Joel Snyder: Oh, perfect. Perfect.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So not to worry. [laughs]

Joel Snyder: Well, I will try and spread the word from this end as well.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I appreciate it and I enjoyed this podcast ’cause I learned something new.

Joel Snyder: Oh, thank you, Donna. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to be with you.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You’re very welcome. Thank you, Joel. And you take care. And look, wait for my invitation.

Joel Snyder: Oh, I’m looking forward to it. You bet.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay, Joel. Take care.

Joel Snyder: Thanks, Donna.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Bye-bye now. [upbeat music]

Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donnajodhan@gmail.com. Until next time. [upbeat music]

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
Global Leader In Disability Rights, Digital Accessibility, And Inclusive Policy Reform
Turning policy into progress for people with disabilities.