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- [00:03]
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From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. For most of cinema's history, movies have made one pretty basic assumption that you can see them. Which means there are all kinds of things a movie doesn't bother to tell you. A look between two characters, a hand reaching for something, the thing happening silently in the last five minutes that explains the entire ending. If you can't see those things, someone has to decide what to tell you and what not to, which turns out to be a much more interesting question than it sounds. In fact, there's an art to it from Recorded Future News and prx this Click Here, a show about how technology is changing everything. I'm Dena Temple Ralston. Today, our colleague Sarah Cavedo takes us inside a part of filmmaking most of us never think about the voice that tells you what you can't see and what happens when that voice stops being an afterthought and starts helping shape the movie itself. We'll be right back. Support for Click Here comes from Decagon. Decagon helps companies create personalized concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available 24, 7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Workflows can be updated using natural language so teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. That means less time spent managing workflows, more time focused on customers and ROI. In weeks. Once they're live, agents can pull up to date information, take action on requests, and understand the context behind any conversation. Also, decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, so it's easy to spot trends and improve the experience over time. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagonaic to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check decagon out at Decagon AI Clickhere. That's Decagon AI Clickhere. Support for Qlik here comes from Nord Security. Here's the challenge it Teams need to see what's happening in browsers, but they can't slow anyone down or disrupt their workflow. Nord Layer Browser solves this. It gives it teams full visibility and control over browser activity while keeping everything familiar and fast. For employees, two products work together. Nord Layer provides the Secured Network foundation, then Nord Layer Browser extends that into the workflow managing web apps, sessions and data. The payoff? Every browser session becomes visible, controlled and secure. Company data stays protected. Access to sensitive resources is managed. Accidental data leaks are prevented. And it works for all kinds of teams, remote workers, contractors, people using their own devices, all secured without the complex setup or device management. Go to nordlayer.com Browser clickhere and unlock your 10% discount on Nordlayer browser with coupon coupon code clickhere10. That's nordlayer.com Browser Clickhere and enter coupon code click here10 at checkout.
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I'm Sarah Cavedo and you're listening to Click here. Thomas Reed grew up going to the movies.
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I'm a Gen Xer, so the early 70s was still a time when you got dressed up to go to the movies.
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For Thomas, film was an essential part of his story, including his love story with his wife.
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When my wife and I were dating, we would go to a multiplex, and I'm not confirming this, but allegedly we would go from one theater to the other on a Saturday afternoon and just watch movies all day.
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Thomas lost his left eye to cancer as an infant. And then in adulthood, as a result of the first treatment, he lost his right eye too.
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I mean, like most people, I never really considered what the experience of movies or any sort of visual content would be like for a blind person. It wasn't until soon after the surgery, removing my right eye, when I wanted to take a break from all of these thoughts that were rolling around in my head. And movies were always great for that escape.
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This was in 2004. Thomas turned on the television and started a film for the first time since losing his sight. And he could kind of follow what was happening. But there were also huge blanks in
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the narrative because there were so many things I was not getting that weren't covered in the dialogue. And I stuck it out cause I'm a trooper like that. And I got to the end and this was one of those movies that the ending sort of resolved itself silently. There was no dialogue, maybe the last three to five minutes or something like that. And the film concluded. And I was pretty pissed off, furious.
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Not because the movie was bad, but because he had no idea what had happened. The ending unfolded almost entirely without dialogue. And Thomas was left sitting there trying to piece it together. Later that night, Thomas confided in his wife about what had just happened.
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She ended up finding out when that movie was going to play again. Watched it to tell me the ending, which is so cool.
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It's A sweet story. His wife literally watched the movie so she could narrate the ending back to him. But it's also a frustrating one, because suddenly something that had been so essential to Thomas life was now out of reach to him. But then his wife discovered something else. A version of what she had done for him. Narrating what had been left out of the dialogue in the film actually already existed.
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And she also ended up looking up some information and found out a little bit more about Audio Description.
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Audio Description in the most basic sense, it's a narrator who steps into the spaces between dialogue and translates what's happening on screen into words. The look on a character's face. A hand reaching for a door. A key detail that clues you into a character's motives. The thing sighted audience absorb without even thinking about it. For people who are blind or have low vision, Audio Description turns those visual details into part of the story. Actually, let's try it right now to give you a feel for what this is like, if it's safe for you. Close your eyes. Imagine you've just sat down in a movie theater. The previews have ended. The lights go down. The movie begins. This is a Quiet Place, Part 2. A film that notoriously features not very much dialogue and a lot of action. Okay, so you can hear something is happening. Labored breathing, tense scoring. But you're left listening for clues, trying to assemble a picture in your mind from the fragments. Maybe you'd lean toward the person sitting next to you and whisper, what's happening? That feeling that everyone else is getting to experience something you're not. That's what many blind moviegoers experienced up until very recently, when they sat down in a movie theater or turned on a movie on a streaming platform. Now, let's try this again. Same scene, only this time with audio description.
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The boy and the girl run down a corridor ahead of Mom. A man grabs them and pulls them aside. Mom runs after them. The man steps out and covers her mouth. A bandana covers most of his face. He motions her to silence.
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Now you can sense what you suspected before. There is a lot happening in this scene, and the descriptions bring it to life. The sounds are connected to action. The story begins to unfold. For Thomas Reed, discovering Audio Description felt a little like discovering movies all over again. A way back into the medium he loved. So you might assume the problem had been solved. But it hadn't. Because Thomas quickly learned that there's a big difference between having audio description and having good audio description. An instance that still sticks out to him was the experience of watching the film Black Panther.
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You know, they described Wakanda as a futuristic looking city. And that's pretty damn vague to me. I am inclined to think about the Jetsons when I think of a futuristic city. So the image that was created in my mind in that case was incorrect.
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Or sometimes the descriptions just state the obvious. Say you're knee deep in a film and the camera pans to the sky and a description might say something like, the sun is high in the sky.
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You don't need to describe that. It's sort of like, duh, you know.
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Other times they explain things that were already obvious from the soundtrack.
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Like if the car engine is being revved up.
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Vroom, vroom.
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And they say he revs up his engine or something. Come on. Like, I know. You know, the thing with audio description is you're supposed to sort of give a viewer the information that they need to be able to interpret the story, not give the person the story, not hold their hand and walk them through the story.
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Though other times, what describers include is
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the problem that could be whether it's the sex scenes where they're just really awfully described sex scenes, or they're left out in total, or nudity is left out, maybe sometimes some sort of violence might be left out, or not described as, you know, as clear as it is on screen. So those are the things that make you feel like a child. And that's again, not a good feeling. Not a good feeling, because it's not as though that feeling is limited to audio description.
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For Thomas, these kinds of patronizing omissions feel strangely familiar.
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That's something that the community, the disabled community in general, deals with on a day to day basis. Just interacting with people, with the public. And so to have that on a piece of art that you're trying to consume, you know, one of the reasons we consume media is to escape and get away. And do you want to have to deal with that too?
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Then, you know, part of the problem is that accessibility is often tucked in at the very end of the process after the movie has already been made. So the creative decisions are finished, and then accessibility is just bolted on afterwards, it seems without any real thought about the experience of someone who's blind or has low vision. And there's actually a term for that, a disability dongle.
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It's a term for a device that is supposedly invented for disabled people. It's supposedly an assistive technology, but in fact it's useless.
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Mara Mills heads the center for Disability Studies at New York University. And she says disability scholars coined this term because this practice is so prevalent across the history of supposedly assistive technologies. If you know where to look, she says disability dongles are everywhere. Take ATMs in the early 1990s, some included Braille. But the braille didn't explain how to use the machine. It just listed a phone number. Or take a product like Olay face cream, marketed as being accessible.
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Most beauty brands don't design products for physical disabilities. You spoke, we listened.
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Boyal of Ole face cream in a jar that was being sold with an optional but you pay extra for it cap with a braille label on it. And that idea, it went viral. But the braille label simply read face cream. How necessary was that? Also the braille, you would have to buy the oil of Olay tub like and then separately get the cap.
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The problem was that nobody had really asked blind people what would actually be useful. And that's what Thomas kept coming back to with audio descriptions. When they're slapped on at the end, they can end up gesturing to the blind community while still in effect, excluding them.
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To me, that just says we're not really thinking about being blind centered. We're not thinking about the art.
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Thinking about the art. That's the part that changes the question. Because what happens if accessibility isn't something you add after the movie is finished? What if it becomes part of making the movie itself? A group of filmmakers decided to find out, and they did it with a story you may already know. That's when we come back. Stay with us.
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Support for Click Here comes from Serval. Every company says AI will make employees more productive, but most employees are still stuck waiting on it, waiting for app access and password resets, waiting for someone to fix a laptop issue so they can get back to work. That operational drag adds up fast, and IT teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up. Servl was built to change that. You describe what you want in plain English and Servl builds it for you. No complicated workflow, no consultants, just faster support and fewer tickets slowing everybody down. The platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so it can focus on strategic work instead of constant firefighting. And unlike traditional automation tools, Servol doesn't require consultants or long implementation cycles. Servol positions it as the AI powered operational backbone of the company, not just a support function. Learn more or start a free four week pilot at serval.com clickhere that's S E R V A L.com clickhere servol.com
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clickhere this show is supported by Blueland. We hear a lot about microplastics in oceans and food, but they can also come from products we use every day at home, like cleaning products. If you're trying to be more mindful about microplastics, check out Blueland. Blueland makes dish soap, laundry detergent and other household products that 100% plastic free. Their formulas are also made without dyes, parabens or harsh chemicals. Instead of repeatedly buying plastic bottles, you just use tablets, making it an easy way to cut down on waste at home. Blueland is a certified B Corp and Leaping Bunny Cruelty Free Certified. Their formulas are EPA Safer Choice certified and many products have also earned Cradle to Cradle's Gold Material Health Certificate. Make the switch today. Get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com prx that's blueland.com prx
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how do we maintain a strong defense in a world that's rapidly changing? Join us on Strength in Numbers, a podcast from UVA's National Security Data and Policy Institute. I'm your host Jennifer Strong. In each episode, we'll take a look at the materials powering today's most advanced technology, how it's being used on the battlefield, and ask how the United States can stay competitive against potential adversaries.
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Voters should be concerned about all this. We want America to be strong, but we've got to be strong and smart.
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That's all coming up this season of Strength in Numbers. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back. I'm Sarah Cavedo and this is Click Here. If you heard Tuesday's episode, you already know Joe Ingrecia, the blind kid with perfect pitch who figured out how to control the telephone system with a whistle. The documentary about his life gave the filmmakers a chance to try something different. Instead of making the movie first and figuring out accessibility later, they thought about how to make it part of the process. From the beginning, we wanted to show
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the film with open audio description first and foremost to make sure that any and all blind or low vision people who wanted to come see the film had an equal experience, that is Will
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Butler, one of the film's producers.
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We wanted it to be a really delightful experience for blind and low vision viewers. But then the secondary effect was helping to build awareness for everyone else.
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And to do that, they brought in blind collaborators early in the process, including Thomas Reid, who we've been talking to. They also brought in an Access artist named Cheryl Greene, who specializes in audio description. The two watched an early cut of the film together over Zoom. Cheryl would describe what she was seeing. Thomas would tell her what was working and what wasn't.
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And we would stop pretty regularly and discuss, you know, did you feel like there was enough room? Did you follow that scene? Or I would stop and say, hey, there's not room at all for me to describe such and such. Would it be a loss if the ad doesn't describe this ad?
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Audio description. The whole time Cheryl was taking notes, looking for places where description could be improved, looking for places where something important might be lost, and occasionally looking for places the film itself might need to be adjusted to accommodate the descriptions.
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Should we tell the filmmakers they need to insert a couple seconds at point this. This point? Because it would just be too much of a loss to not describe this thing?
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The question changes the relationship entirely because now accessibility isn't being added to the film, it's helping shape the film itself. It's considering both the experience of blind audience members and the vision of the director, balancing the practical and the creative and changing the work itself to meet the the needs of both. Cheryl and Thomas went back and forth with the filmmakers. A blind script consultant weighed into everyone, looking at the same question from a slightly different angle. What information is essential? What can be left unsaid? And how do you make room for those details without changing the spirit of the film?
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I was getting the non blind director's feedback and the blind consultants feedback on calls together and we would sort of negotiate lines.
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Negotiate lines. It's an interesting way to think about it because traditionally accessibility has been treated as a technology problem. But this wasn't a technical process, this was a creative one. The team wasn't trying to describe everything on screen. They were trying to decide what mattered. Eventually, all those conversations turned into a script. And when the descriptions were finally written, Thomas wasn't just consulting on the writing, he was helping bring it to life. Something he does now. He's a professional audio narrator. Take a listen. Here he is narrating the Joy Bubbles film.
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I sure do.
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Fade to black. Red lights. Long straight beams like guitar strings plucked by blinking orbs of crimson and gold. A spinning sphere, red and hot pink. Waxy smears like a lava lamp.
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They say what?
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When you go downhill, you pick up speed.
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Which I did.
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The finished Joy Bubbles film premiered at Sundance in January, and it was a first for the festival. Joy Bubbles was screened with open audio description, meaning the descriptions weren't tucked away on a separate audio track reserved for someone wearing headphones. The entire audience heard them. Blind audience members, sighted audience members, everyone.
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We were a little nervous because we were like, not sure that people were going to get it. But the feedback was so, so wonderful and nobody that we spoke to really found it to be distracting. It's just adding a kind of an additional layer of access that you can choose to engage with. Everybody gets something out of it.
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Everyone gets something out of it. The narration might call attention to a detail in the frame, a gesture, a glance, a detail sitting quietly in the corner. It doesn't replace the film, it sits alongside it like another storyteller in the room. The descriptions weren't pulling people out of the experience, they were becoming part of it.
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It's something that we really hope more filmmakers embrace, and we're really excited to see it starting to take root in the festival circuit, because if we can have films be accessible to everyone at the very start, then they have a better shot of reaching people along the way.
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For decades, accessibility has mostly been treated as something you add after the fact, a final step, a separate track, an accommodation. But the Joy Bubbles team took a different approach, and maybe that's why this story belongs next to the one we told on Tuesday. Joe and Grecia found possibilities inside the Telephone that its designers never imagined. The people who made the film about him and the blind and disabled artists bettering Audio Description like Thomas Reed or Cheryl Greene, they're doing something similar. They stopped asking how to make a finished movie accessible or what the bare minimum of an assistive technology could be, and started asking, what if access was there from the beginning? What if it didn't just help you experience the art, but changed what the art could be? I'm Ser Cavedo, this is Click Here.
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- [24:26]
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if you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.
- [24:57]
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Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch, and Maya Fawaz. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Cavedo and fact checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. I'm Dena Tumble Raston, and thanks for listening.
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Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what Matters?
- [25:54]
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Act first if you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.