Latest / Podcasts By Donna Jodhan / Remarkable World Commentary Episode #117: Interview with Joel Snyder, President, Audio Description Associates, LLC

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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #117: Interview with Joel Snyder, President, Audio Description Associates, LLC · Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

0:12
Podcast Commentator: [upbeat digital music] Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB,
0:16
Podcast Commentator: ACSP, and MBA invites you to listen to her bi-weekly podcast,
0:22
Podcast Commentator: Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts,
0:27
Podcast Commentator: insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners.
0:31
Podcast Commentator: Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids,
0:35
Podcast Commentator: especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate,
0:40
Podcast Commentator: author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer,
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Podcast Commentator: entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator.
0:50
Podcast Commentator: She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills,
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Podcast Commentator: and expertise in access, technology, and information.
0:58
Podcast Commentator: As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles,
1:02
Podcast Commentator: she just wants to make things better than possible.
1:07
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Remarkable
1:13
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: World Commentary.
1:15
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'm Donna J. Jodhan,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly through
1:23
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: sound, touch, and stubborn optimism.
1:28
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I am a law graduate, an accessibility consultant, author,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind.
1:39
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010,
1:45
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its
1:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: websites accessible to every Canadian, not just to sighted ones.
1:57
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And in July of 2019,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: disability groups to turn equal access into federal law.
2:11
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I was tremendously humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: for tireless commitment to removing barriers.
2:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: When I'm not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: producing audio mysteries,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: or helping tech companies to make their gadgets talk back in
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: plain language.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Everything I do circles one goal,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: and that is to turn accessibility from an afterthought into
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: everyday practice.
3:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: where policy meets lived experience,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, before we jump into today's conversation,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: let me shine a quick spotlight on today's guest,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: a change maker whose work is as every bit as remarkable as the
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: world that we are trying to build.
3:33
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I am pleased and I am tremendously privileged to welcome Joel Snyder to our
3:39
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Remarkable World Commentary podcast for today.
3:43
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Welcome, Joel.
3:44
Joel Snyder: Thank you, Donna. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with you.
3:48
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: All right. So let's get right into things then.
3:53
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Joel, long before
3:56
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: anyone called this a
4:01
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: profession,
4:04
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: you were a volunteer reader at the Metropolitan
4:10
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Washington Ear reading the Sunday Washington
4:16
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Post aloud.
4:17
Joel Snyder: [laughs] That's right, for about 10 years.
4:20
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, and somewhere in there you started describing the comics
4:26
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: the way Mayor La Guardia
4:31
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: once did on the radio. I want you to take me back to that studio.
4:38
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What made you start describing the pictures instead of just
4:44
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: reading the words?
4:45
Joel Snyder: [laughs] Well, in the '70s,
4:49
Joel Snyder: indeed I was a volunteer for the Metropolitan Washington Ear,
4:54
Joel Snyder: a radio reading service.
4:56
Joel Snyder: And volunteers took turns reading different newspapers and magazine articles
5:01
Joel Snyder: and short stories and that sort of thing
5:04
Joel Snyder: for this radio reading service on a frequency that was accessible via a
5:10
Joel Snyder: particular receiver that people who are blind primarily used.
5:15
Joel Snyder: And it was great fun,
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Joel Snyder: a great learning experience for me as a young voice talent and actor and such.
5:23
Joel Snyder: And
5:24
Joel Snyder: it really occurred to all of us as we're reading newspapers,
5:27
Joel Snyder: newspapers are chock-full of photographs and graphic advertisements and such,
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Joel Snyder: and if we're gonna make the newspaper accessible, we can't just read the text,
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Joel Snyder: just like Mayor La Guardia did in the '40s.
5:42
Joel Snyder: He was reading the comics to the people of New York City.
5:45
Joel Snyder: Couldn't just read the text.
5:47
Joel Snyder: You gotta describe the images. And all of us as volunteers there were
5:54
Joel Snyder: not struggling with it really,
5:55
Joel Snyder: but we realized that that's certainly something we needed to do.
5:59
Joel Snyder: But there was no
6:01
Joel Snyder: kind of best practices or guidelines of standards for doing description.
6:06
Joel Snyder: We just did it. People have been describing things since prehistoric times.
6:12
Joel Snyder: But it was a little bit later,
6:15
Joel Snyder: in about 1980, when the woman who founded the Washington Ear,
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Joel Snyder: its director, Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl, a blind woman,
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Joel Snyder: she was on a committee at Arena Stage,
6:29
Joel Snyder: the professional repertory theater in Washington, DC.
6:33
Joel Snyder: A committee to advise them on accessibility, which in 1980,
6:38
Joel Snyder: that wasn't done very often.
6:40
Joel Snyder: But they had convened the committee partly on the occasion of having installed
6:46
Joel Snyder: an assisted listening system.
6:49
Joel Snyder: So yeah, also very new.
6:53
Joel Snyder: They're ubiquitous now, but
6:55
Joel Snyder: this was their installed,
6:58
Joel Snyder: to help people who had hearing loss hear what's going on.
7:03
Joel Snyder: Well, Margaret was on that committee, a blind woman,
7:07
Joel Snyder: along with another gentleman from the Department of Education,
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Joel Snyder: Chet Avery, a blind man, and both of them thought this system was wonderful,
7:17
Joel Snyder: but they also both wondered, "Well, gee, what do you have for us?
7:21
Joel Snyder: We're blind. We don't have hearing."
7:23
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:26
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, my goodness.
7:27
Joel Snyder: So
7:29
Joel Snyder: they theorized as they learned about the system,
7:31
Joel Snyder: it's just a microphone on a stage and that connects to some sort of transmitter,
7:37
Joel Snyder: and the sound is received by people wearing headsets in the audience.
7:41
Joel Snyder: You can crank up the volume. So they wondered if, well,
7:46
Joel Snyder: if it's just a microphone on stage,
7:47
Joel Snyder: maybe you could have two channels and the second
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Joel Snyder: channel could be used by a person with a second microphone.
7:57
Joel Snyder: Why couldn't that happen? Maybe somebody off stage,
8:01
Joel Snyder: maybe using the pauses in between bits and pieces of dialogue or critical sound
8:06
Joel Snyder: elements,
8:07
Joel Snyder: just let us know what's going on.
8:11
Joel Snyder: What action in particular. But of course, there might be description of
8:15
Joel Snyder: facial expressions, the settings, costumes and such as time allows.
8:21
Joel Snyder: And at the stage,
8:23
Joel Snyder: they thought, "Well, gee, we've never heard of that before."
8:26
Joel Snyder: And Margaret and Chet both felt like, "Well, yeah,
8:30
Joel Snyder: we haven't heard it before either. We just made it up."
8:34
Joel Snyder: But could it work possibly?
8:36
Joel Snyder: And so Arena Stage agreed and said, "Well, Margaret,
8:40
Joel Snyder: you've got a radio station.
8:43
Joel Snyder: Maybe you can get some folks together and figure out how we would do this."
8:47
Joel Snyder: And Margaret grabbed me,
8:49
Joel Snyder: I was already an English teacher and professional actor and voice talent,
8:53
Joel Snyder: and a couple of others, and we began to hammer this out.
8:57
Joel Snyder: What would we even call it? Well, it's an aural experience.
9:02
Joel Snyder: Audio, audio description. That's what we'll do.
9:06
Joel Snyder: And we worked on it for about a year, and in the summer of 1981,
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Joel Snyder: the very first professional theater presentation with audio description
9:18
Joel Snyder: debuted. Major Barbara,
9:21
Joel Snyder: the play by Shaw, at Arena Stage with audio description.
9:25
Joel Snyder: And
9:28
Joel Snyder: I should add quickly, though, that
9:31
Joel Snyder: the idea
9:33
Joel Snyder: of doing this as a service accompanying
9:37
Joel Snyder: a dramatic production or a film or video occurred to a fellow in San Francisco,
9:42
Joel Snyder: to Gregory Frazier, in the mid-1970s.
9:46
Joel Snyder: He did a master's thesis on this topic.
9:50
Joel Snyder: He had a good friend who was blind, and
9:53
Joel Snyder: I think he was a little tired of always having to describe movies to his friend.
9:57
Joel Snyder: And he thought, "This should just be something available."
10:01
Joel Snyder: He wrote a master's thesis called An All Audio Adaptation of the Autobiography of
10:06
Joel Snyder: Miss Jane Pittman, a great film with Cicely Tyson.
10:10
Joel Snyder: And so that was his master's thesis back in, I think it was '78,
10:14
Joel Snyder: '77. And in mid-'80s,
10:17
Joel Snyder: he went on to develop a service just like we had in Washington,
10:21
Joel Snyder: but this is in San Francisco,
10:24
Joel Snyder: a service called AudioVision doing description for
10:28
Joel Snyder: live performance.
10:30
Joel Snyder: And both of the services are still around and doing description at
10:36
Joel Snyder: different kinds of performing arts events, especially dance,
10:40
Joel Snyder: theater, opera.
10:44
Joel Snyder: And then it went on from there.
10:45
Joel Snyder: 1985, we collaborated with WGBH in Boston
10:51
Joel Snyder: to actually start doing this for television.
10:55
Joel Snyder: We did a pilot for them,
10:58
Joel Snyder: which was very successful.
10:59
Joel Snyder: I actually wrote and voiced three of the very first television programs ever
11:05
Joel Snyder: broadcast in this country, certainly, with audio description.
11:11
Joel Snyder: So then it began to get
11:14
Joel Snyder: publicized and took off from there.
11:17
Joel Snyder: It took a little while to start getting it on DVDs,
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Joel Snyder: or actually first came VHS videotape.
11:24
Joel Snyder: [laughs] Remember those?
11:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Yes.
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Joel Snyder: Which was not the ideal format because you couldn't turn it on or off.
11:32
Joel Snyder: You either had it on that tape,
11:36
Joel Snyder: but with DVDs, you could turn it on and off, that sort of thing.
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Joel Snyder: And then it started bubbling around on television and our FCC
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Joel Snyder: started considering whether that this should be
11:48
Joel Snyder: joined with captioning, for instance.
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Joel Snyder: Captioning was already
11:54
Joel Snyder: required on broadcast television. So that started to bubble,
11:57
Joel Snyder: and movie theaters started to realize that they needed to make
12:03
Joel Snyder: their presentations accessible. But the movie theater itself,
12:08
Joel Snyder: they're just showing movies from Hollywood.
12:11
Joel Snyder: So Hollywood needed to start thinking about doing captioning and doing
12:17
Joel Snyder: audio description so that now just about every feature film that comes out has an
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Joel Snyder: audio description track.
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Joel Snyder: We've come a long way. And then finally streaming came about
12:30
Joel Snyder: more recently. And
12:32
Joel Snyder: it took some persuading, but now Netflix, Amazon, Disney,
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Joel Snyder: others who stream, who have these streaming services for entertainment,
12:43
Joel Snyder: they're doing it in 12, 15 languages around the world.
12:47
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Whoa.
12:48
Joel Snyder: Yeah. So in a nutshell,
12:50
Joel Snyder: that's kind of the recent history of audio description [laughs] in the United States.
12:55
Joel Snyder: Canada has been a real player though as well. In fact,
13:00
Joel Snyder: well, I remember
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Joel Snyder: there was a group called AudioVision Canada
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Joel Snyder: that I think morphed into,
13:08
Joel Snyder: graduated into other services in Canada,
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Joel Snyder: but they actually experimented with taking public domain films,
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Joel Snyder: just
13:19
Joel Snyder: dubbing out from
13:21
Joel Snyder: the film just the audio track and then mixing it with audio description.
13:27
Joel Snyder: And they started issuing audio cassettes that were audio films,
13:32
Joel Snyder: essentially, which I still have a few of them.
13:36
Joel Snyder: It didn't go very far. It wasn't marketed perhaps as well as it could be,
13:41
Joel Snyder: but I'm still trying to convince Hollywood to— They own the description.
13:46
Joel Snyder: They own the films.
13:48
Joel Snyder: Why not issue audio versions of the film with audio description?
13:53
Joel Snyder: And you have an audio film that I think would sell to sighted people who wanna
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Joel Snyder: re-experience a film in their car or at the theater.
14:04
Joel Snyder: So that's on the horizon,
14:06
Joel Snyder: hopefully.
14:06
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Whoa.
14:08
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What a whirlwind journey for you, huh?
14:10
Joel Snyder: And there you go. It's true. It's true.
14:13
Joel Snyder: I've been working with it now
14:16
Joel Snyder: almost 46 years.
14:20
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, in the summer of 1981 at Arena Stage in
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Washington is the moment that field usually points to
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Margaret, okay?
14:33
Joel Snyder: Right, Margaret Pfanstiehl.
14:35
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Pfanstiehl. And Chet Avery.
14:37
Joel Snyder: Yes. That's right.
14:39
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right? An assistant listening system meant for hard of hearing
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: patrons. And a production of Major Barbara.
14:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You were in the room.
14:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Tell our listeners what actually happened.
14:58
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And what it felt like to be doing something nobody had a name
15:04
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: for as yet. Tell us.
15:05
Joel Snyder: That's right.
15:07
Joel Snyder: Well, I guess we didn't really know that we were doing something that was
15:11
Joel Snyder: groundbreaking or that would expand or— We just wanted to try it with theater,
15:17
Joel Snyder: and we did. And it worked out pretty well.
15:22
Joel Snyder: Radio reading services,
15:24
Joel Snyder: pretty much all of them follow a volunteer model.
15:28
Joel Snyder: Like I said, I was a volunteer reader.
15:30
Joel Snyder: And the description for performing arts basically assumed that model,
15:37
Joel Snyder: so that
15:38
Joel Snyder: volunteers would develop the description based on a couple of viewings,
15:43
Joel Snyder: two or three viewings of a play. And then at
15:48
Joel Snyder: certain performances, maybe one or two performances out of a six-week run,
15:53
Joel Snyder: we would provide the audio description.
15:56
Joel Snyder: And it was, again, volunteer based.
15:59
Joel Snyder: You didn't wanna have to charge the theaters much, if anything at all.
16:02
Joel Snyder: And you're using volunteers, so you can't really say,
16:06
Joel Snyder: "Well, we need you to be at every performance and be available and all of
16:10
Joel Snyder: that." And that's changing a little bit because I think
16:14
Joel Snyder: people who are blind have a right to access any and every performance of a
16:19
Joel Snyder: performing arts piece. They should be able to go up to the box office and say,
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Joel Snyder: "I'd like a ticket for tonight. Oh, I need the audio description,
16:26
Joel Snyder: please."
16:28
Joel Snyder: And be able to access it. So
16:31
Joel Snyder: there are different
16:33
Joel Snyder: ways to try to accomplish that and
16:36
Joel Snyder: we're working on that.
16:40
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Interesting. Now,
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: you are very often introduced as the father of audio
16:48
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: description. But yet in your own tellings,
16:52
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: you consistently hand the credit to Dr. Margaret
16:58
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Pfanstiehl?
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Joel Snyder: Oh, Pfanstiehl. Absolutely.
17:01
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: A blind woman.
17:02
Joel Snyder: That's right. Listen, description is not just for blind people.
17:06
Joel Snyder: It's by blind people. It was developed by Margaret.
17:11
Joel Snyder: In fact, nowadays with media,
17:13
Joel Snyder: some of the best quality control consultants are people who are blind,
17:18
Joel Snyder: who know audio description.
17:20
Joel Snyder: They contribute to the writing of the description.
17:23
Joel Snyder: Some of the best voice talents are people who are totally blind.
17:27
Joel Snyder: And some of the best audio editors are people who are totally blind.
17:32
Joel Snyder: So—
17:32
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Really?
17:33
Joel Snyder: It's absolutely critical that it be understood as
17:38
Joel Snyder: an activity that folks who are blind are very much a part of.
17:43
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now,
17:46
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: why does it matter so much to you that the record shows a blind
17:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: woman at the origin of this field?
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Joel Snyder: Well, that is the fact of the matter.
17:58
Joel Snyder: [laughs] I wasn't on the committee at Arena Stage.
18:05
Joel Snyder: Chet Avery is sometimes overlooked a little bit.
18:12
Joel Snyder: It wasn't called the Department of Education in those days.
18:14
Joel Snyder: I think it was Health and Human Services, something like that.
18:17
Joel Snyder: But he was actually a blind man overseeing funding for captioning.
18:23
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh my Lord.
18:24
Joel Snyder: He had the idea back in the '60s really,
18:28
Joel Snyder: what if we had,
18:30
Joel Snyder: he called it audio captions for film or television that would clue
18:36
Joel Snyder: people into what's going on. People who are blind primarily.
18:40
Joel Snyder: Other populations benefit as well.
18:43
Joel Snyder: And the idea just never took hold.
18:47
Joel Snyder: In fact,
18:49
Joel Snyder: there were some folks in the blind community who would say,
18:53
Joel Snyder: "Well,
18:54
Joel Snyder: we don't really need that. That would be a crutch.
18:59
Joel Snyder: We will not have to depend on that. We can get along just listening to the audio.
19:05
Joel Snyder: And what's more important is having initiatives that will build employment for
19:10
Joel Snyder: blind people," which my goodness, is certainly true.
19:14
Joel Snyder: But other things other than the arts or television,
19:18
Joel Snyder: we're getting on fine with it.
19:21
Joel Snyder: Most blind people watch, quote unquote,
19:23
Joel Snyder: television by listening to what's going on, and so much is communicated by sound.
19:29
Joel Snyder: We don't need it. And—
19:31
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: New notification from Audible.
19:31
Joel Snyder: Thank goodness,
19:33
Joel Snyder: and there are still some organizations and folks certainly in this country who still
19:39
Joel Snyder: feel a little bit like, "Eh, it's not a priority.
19:43
Joel Snyder: It's a nice thing to have."
19:45
Joel Snyder: But certainly the American Council of the Blind here has been a real advocate
19:51
Joel Snyder: and supporter for audio description. About 17 years ago,
19:55
Joel Snyder: I worked with them to
19:58
Joel Snyder: found the Audio Description Project, which is an initiative ACB.
20:03
Joel Snyder: And we have a website that lists everything that we know of that's
20:08
Joel Snyder: described, museums, theaters, every film, every television show.
20:14
Joel Snyder: And we have, oh golly, we have contests for blind kids,
20:18
Joel Snyder: where they write reviews of the described videos.
20:23
Joel Snyder: We have conferences and awards and training institutes.
20:27
Joel Snyder: So
20:28
Joel Snyder: it's grown a great deal. But if I may,
20:30
Joel Snyder: the website is simply ADP, Audio Description Project,
20:36
Joel Snyder: https://adp.acb.org.
20:42
Joel Snyder: Yeah, https://adp.acb.org.
20:45
Joel Snyder: And really,
20:47
Joel Snyder: everything you wanted to know about audio description is there.
20:50
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow.
20:52
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh my God.
20:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, you also go out of your way to credit Gregory Frazier,
21:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: who was writing about all audio adaptation,
21:05
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: San Francisco stage, back in the
21:10
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: mid-1970s, and went on to build
21:14
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: AudioVision. Most people have never heard his name.
21:21
Joel Snyder: Yeah, I think he wrote—
21:22
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But why do you keep saying it? And what did his
21:28
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: lineage on the West Coast contribute that the Washington
21:34
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: story alone doesn't capture?
21:37
Joel Snyder: Well, he was the first. He did, as I say, a master's thesis.
21:42
Joel Snyder: He was the first person to really sit down on paper and publish
21:47
Joel Snyder: ideas about the act and the art of audio description.
21:52
Joel Snyder: And
21:54
Joel Snyder: I have my own PhD that is focused on audio description,
21:58
Joel Snyder: where it's— In Europe, it's studied,
22:00
Joel Snyder: and master's degrees and PhDs are obtainable because it's a kind of
22:05
Joel Snyder: audiovisual translation. And really in this country,
22:09
Joel Snyder: in the world, as far as I know, and I wrote a book about this,
22:14
Joel Snyder: The Visual Made Verbal,
22:17
Joel Snyder: as far as I know,
22:18
Joel Snyder: Gregory was the first to actually publish something that referenced what we call
22:24
Joel Snyder: now as audio description.
22:27
Joel Snyder: Gregory wasn't all that involved with its development on television and film,
22:34
Joel Snyder: because he— Well, he was in San Francisco, and of course
22:38
Joel Snyder: so much film comes out of Los Angeles. And it was really the brainchild of
22:44
Joel Snyder: WGBH in Boston, where they heard about what we were doing,
22:48
Joel Snyder: and they realized that with broadcast television, even back in analog days,
22:54
Joel Snyder: there was a secondary audio program feature with stereo televisions,
22:59
Joel Snyder: SAP. And that would be the ideal way to transmit this second
23:05
Joel Snyder: audio track. It was there for Spanish translation.
23:09
Joel Snyder: And even today,
23:13
Joel Snyder: most usually on weekends with sports events, you'll hear Spanish translation,
23:18
Joel Snyder: which means you will not hear description. [laughs] And you would think
23:22
Joel Snyder: in this day and age, with everything digital,
23:25
Joel Snyder: technically there's capacity to have a dozen different audio tracks,
23:30
Joel Snyder: but it just hasn't happened yet.
23:32
Joel Snyder: So that's another goal for us because there should be— There's room to have
23:37
Joel Snyder: audio description in English, audio description in Spanish,
23:40
Joel Snyder: translation in Spanish, and other languages as well.
23:44
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Ring. Woo.
23:46
Joel Snyder: Yeah. Lots of stuff going on.
23:49
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, what I didn't know until I was prepping for this interview is that you
23:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: have been an actor since you were about seven years
24:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: old.
24:00
Joel Snyder: Oh, goodness. Yeah. [laughs]
24:01
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And you still perform.
24:03
Joel Snyder: Yeah. Yeah, no, I—
24:05
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I want to ask you about the craft rather than the policy for a moment.
24:11
Joel Snyder: Ah, thank you.
24:11
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What does training as a performer give a
24:17
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: describer that no amount of writing skills can substitute?
24:24
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Four. Tell me.
24:25
Joel Snyder: Yeah, that is great. Thank you, Donna, for mentioning that.
24:29
Joel Snyder: I've been a equity member, Actors' Equity Association for over 50 years.
24:38
Joel Snyder: I train describers all around the world, some 60 countries now,
24:42
Joel Snyder: and most of the United States. Canada, of course.
24:49
Joel Snyder: I'm probably the only person offering training who hearkens back to
24:54
Joel Snyder: training for actors.
24:56
Joel Snyder: There's a classic text called The First Six Lessons of Acting by Richard
25:00
Joel Snyder: Boleslavsky. And
25:04
Joel Snyder: two of those lessons are concentration and observation.
25:08
Joel Snyder: And I developed what I teach and in my book,
25:13
Joel Snyder: the four fundamentals of audio description,
25:15
Joel Snyder: and observation is the first one.
25:18
Joel Snyder: An audio describer has to observe, has to be an active seer,
25:24
Joel Snyder: one who sees. And
25:27
Joel Snyder: so does an actor,
25:28
Joel Snyder: because you're reproducing on stage what you've observed around the world.
25:33
Joel Snyder: And you only do that to the extent that you're able to really concentrate on what
25:39
Joel Snyder: is out there. So I trace this right back to acting training.
25:45
Joel Snyder: And then of course, audio description, 99% of it is voiced aloud.
25:50
Joel Snyder: So it's helpful to be able to voice in a way that makes meaning,
25:55
Joel Snyder: makes it clear, makes it understandable and clear.
25:59
Joel Snyder: So those skills come into play as well.
26:03
Joel Snyder: Now some people, [laughs] some people, Donna, will say,
26:06
Joel Snyder: "Oh, I have a friend who's an actor. He's got a beautiful voice.
26:10
Joel Snyder: He'd be a great audio describer."
26:13
Joel Snyder: And maybe he would, but audio describing is about the crafting of the language.
26:19
Joel Snyder: And then it has to be voiced, and that's a voice talent or a narrator,
26:24
Joel Snyder: if you will.
26:26
Joel Snyder: Or some people say they're performing the audio description.
26:29
Joel Snyder: I shy away from that word, really,
26:31
Joel Snyder: because the best compliment an audio description— after a performance at a live
26:37
Joel Snyder: theater, best compliment that the describer can get is,
26:41
Joel Snyder: "I forgot you were there."
26:44
Joel Snyder: You know?
26:46
Joel Snyder: For live theater,
26:47
Joel Snyder: it's almost always the same person who crafts the description is voicing it.
26:53
Joel Snyder: In movies,
26:54
Joel Snyder: it's different. In movies,
26:55
Joel Snyder: it's described somewhere and then it's voiced somewhere else,
26:58
Joel Snyder: that sort of thing.
27:00
Joel Snyder: But
27:03
Joel Snyder: actors wanna be in the spotlight. Goodness, I know that.
27:07
Joel Snyder: And
27:09
Joel Snyder: when you voice audio description,
27:12
Joel Snyder: again, I think the point is to disappear.
27:16
Joel Snyder: The consumer gets everything,
27:19
Joel Snyder: but forgets that you were there because nobody goes to a play or a film to hear
27:25
Joel Snyder: the audio describer. They experience the film or the play.
27:29
Joel Snyder: And our job is to, with the writing and with the voicing,
27:34
Joel Snyder: to be inconspicuous, to be in consonance with what's going on.
27:39
Joel Snyder: But don't— You're not in the play, you're not in the movie,
27:43
Joel Snyder: you are of the play, of the movie.
27:46
Joel Snyder: And that's the distinction that I think is important.
27:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, I wrote three seasons of The Detective DJ and the Crime Crushers.
27:57
Joel Snyder: Oh my goodness.
27:58
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I commentated it. I audioed it. I did everything for it.
28:02
Joel Snyder: Fantastic.
28:02
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'm [laughs] fairly sure it could've been made better if I had known you at that
28:07
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: time, [laughs] you know?
28:08
Joel Snyder: [laughs] We'd be a great team, that's right.
28:11
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, yeah.
28:12
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So you spent 20 years at the National
28:19
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Endowment for the Arts from 1982 to
28:26
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: 2002,
28:29
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: and you served as acting director of its Inter-Arts
28:35
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Program.
28:35
Joel Snyder: Inter-Arts Program, that's right. With—
28:37
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: More than once.
28:38
Joel Snyder: What they called presenting program, et cetera. Yeah.
28:40
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, what did two decades inside a federal arts
28:46
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: agency teach you about how change actually happens in
28:52
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: large institutions,
28:55
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: and did it make you more patient or less patient?
29:01
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Be honest. [laughs]
29:03
Joel Snyder: Well, the period that I was there, '82 to '02, was oftentimes referred,
29:09
Joel Snyder: at least certainly the '90s, referred to as the culture wars.
29:14
Joel Snyder: And we had congressmen
29:16
Joel Snyder: really trying to defund the NEA because they felt we were funding things that
29:23
Joel Snyder: were not part of the mainstream and that that should be our mission.
29:27
Joel Snyder: And I, of course, and others felt like, well, no,
29:31
Joel Snyder: that's what the commercial sector does.
29:34
Joel Snyder: Funding should be about the art form
29:37
Joel Snyder: and what's advancing the art form, not necessarily what's commercial.
29:42
Joel Snyder: So we went through that certainly, and still going through that really.
29:46
Joel Snyder: And unfortunately, the Arts Endowment is a shell of its former self these days.
29:51
Joel Snyder: But it was quite a ride for about 20 years,
29:55
Joel Snyder: and that's how I earned the bulk of my living. I was also doing acting,
29:59
Joel Snyder: but I didn't make a living in audio description until 2002,
30:03
Joel Snyder: when I left the Endowment, and have ever since,
30:07
Joel Snyder: which is just great. But the Endowment—
30:13
Joel Snyder: Everybody
30:15
Joel Snyder: in a country, I think, has the right to access culture.
30:22
Joel Snyder: And I think every theater, every orchestra, every dance company,
30:26
Joel Snyder: et cetera, has the right to be as inclusive as possible.
30:30
Joel Snyder: And that doesn't necessarily make money. For those entities.
30:34
Joel Snyder: So funding by government sources, by corporations and foundations,
30:40
Joel Snyder: by individuals is so important.
30:45
Joel Snyder: And indeed the services themselves that help build inclusivity like
30:51
Joel Snyder: audio description, like captioning, like sign language interpretation,
30:56
Joel Snyder: those services I think are appropriate for public funding,
30:59
Joel Snyder: and funding from the other sources as well certainly.
31:03
Joel Snyder: But it's a bit of a slog, especially these days,
31:08
Joel Snyder: certainly in the United States where there's been a bit of an emphasis on
31:12
Joel Snyder: cutting back
31:14
Joel Snyder: services and government funds.
31:17
Joel Snyder: I think Canada's in a better way these days, certainly.
31:22
Joel Snyder: And you have a Ministry of Culture, whereas we have—
31:27
Joel Snyder: the comparable agency is the National Endowment for the Arts.
31:32
Joel Snyder: But most countries in Europe have a Ministry of Culture that functions in the
31:36
Joel Snyder: same way, providing some funding.
31:39
Joel Snyder: The difference in America, and this is an important one,
31:44
Joel Snyder: is that our tax structure allows for contributions from
31:49
Joel Snyder: individuals and corporations.
31:52
Joel Snyder: When an individual contributes to an arts organization that is officially a
31:56
Joel Snyder: non-profit organization or in other countries referred to as an NGO,
32:03
Joel Snyder: when anybody contributes, they're able to take credit for that off their taxes.
32:08
Joel Snyder: And that's
32:10
Joel Snyder: a big incentive and certainly results in funding far greater than the
32:16
Joel Snyder: modest budget of the NEA.
32:20
Joel Snyder: And there are also,
32:21
Joel Snyder: I believe all 50 states have a state arts agency.
32:26
Joel Snyder: And indeed,
32:27
Joel Snyder: I'm in the State of Maryland and served on the Maryland State Arts Council for two
32:31
Joel Snyder: years. And they also play an important role with state government money
32:37
Joel Snyder: primarily. They get money from the National Endowment for the Arts as well.
32:42
Joel Snyder: And there are local arts agencies that also are part of that distribution
32:46
Joel Snyder: mechanism.
32:50
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: This is all so new to me and very interesting, you know.
32:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But when you left the NEA and went straight
33:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: into building described media program at the Na—
33:05
Joel Snyder: Right, at National Captioning Institute. That's right.
33:08
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, yeah.
33:09
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And description started reaching national television,
33:15
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: including Sesame Street.
33:17
Joel Snyder: That's it. [laughs]
33:19
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What was it like moving from describing a live stage to
33:25
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: describing broadcast media?
33:28
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And what did you have
33:31
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: to unlearn,
33:34
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: as they would say?
33:35
Joel Snyder: Well, I always thought that description will not really take off until it's in
33:41
Joel Snyder: media, until it's on television and with movies and such.
33:45
Joel Snyder: And that has proved to be true. Yeah,
33:49
Joel Snyder: we were the first folks to provide description for Sesame Street.
33:55
Joel Snyder: And
33:57
Joel Snyder: I must say back in those days in the 2000s, and still today actually,
34:02
Joel Snyder: the federal government does provide some funding for the description on television
34:07
Joel Snyder: for educational media.
34:10
Joel Snyder: And we used that funding to offer audio description,
34:14
Joel Snyder: for instance, to the
34:16
Joel Snyder: Children's Television Workshop that produced Sesame Street.
34:20
Joel Snyder: And that was
34:22
Joel Snyder: great fun to do, and it still is being described and captioned as well.
34:28
Joel Snyder: And it's important, as I mentioned,
34:31
Joel Snyder: little kids
34:32
Joel Snyder: who are blind or have low vision benefit a great deal from that.
34:37
Joel Snyder: In fact, a quick story, Donna.
34:41
Joel Snyder: When I was doing Sesame Street, we got a letter from a
34:45
Joel Snyder: 45-year-old blind woman
34:48
Joel Snyder: who wanted to compliment us on Sesame Street. And I thought,
34:51
Joel Snyder: "Well, that's— It's nice, but that program's for three to five-year-olds."
34:57
Joel Snyder: Well, it turns out that she was congenitally blind.
35:01
Joel Snyder: And she loved Sesame Street when she was a child just listening to the funny
35:07
Joel Snyder: voices and the music and the sounds and such.
35:11
Joel Snyder: Well, now she was moved to write to us because she had two sighted
35:16
Joel Snyder: children. And she could for the first time follow along with her
35:22
Joel Snyder: kids the antics of Bert and Ernie and Elmo and all the other
35:28
Joel Snyder: denizens of Sesame Street.
35:31
Joel Snyder: So that was really
35:33
Joel Snyder: a heartwarming letter we received from a blind woman,
35:37
Joel Snyder: as I say.
35:39
Joel Snyder: And there's the other story too, that you may have heard,
35:43
Joel Snyder: another program that was really right up there almost as popular as Sesame Street,
35:47
Joel Snyder: but Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Have you heard of that one?
35:50
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Yes, I have.
35:53
Joel Snyder: Fred Rogers, which, just a wonderful program,
35:56
Joel Snyder: very different than Sesame Street, but much beloved.
35:59
Joel Snyder: And there's a reason why Fred Rogers would always out loud say when
36:05
Joel Snyder: he was feeding his fish on his little living room set there.
36:10
Joel Snyder: He got a letter from a five-year-old blind girl, Cathy,
36:15
Joel Snyder: who said, "Would you do that, please?
36:17
Joel Snyder: Because I can't see if you're feeding your fish,
36:21
Joel Snyder: and I really wanna know that the fish are being taken care of."
36:26
Joel Snyder: And the papa added a note, said, "Yes, Cathy is blind,
36:30
Joel Snyder: and she really does cry if you don't say you are feeding the fish."
36:36
Joel Snyder: So
36:37
Joel Snyder: Fred Rogers added in a little bit of description,
36:41
Joel Snyder: kind of built it into the show, which is wonderful,
36:45
Joel Snyder: in honor of this child who wrote to him.
36:49
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
36:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I wonder if you ever thought of doing, or maybe you have,
36:55
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: doing any audio description for one of my favorite shows growing up,
36:59
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: The Flintstones.
37:03
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Did you?
37:03
Joel Snyder: That's great. No, I haven't.
37:07
Joel Snyder: I've done
37:09
Joel Snyder: various cartoon shows. Animated programs.
37:13
Joel Snyder: Not The Flintstones, though.
37:16
Joel Snyder: Another one that I would love to hear described,
37:19
Joel Snyder: I was always a big fan of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.
37:23
Joel Snyder: And [laughs] in fact, I even went to them at one point,
37:27
Joel Snyder: the people that own the show now, and said, "I'll do it for free.
37:32
Joel Snyder: You know? Let's figure out a way to get description."
37:34
Joel Snyder: And that never happened.
37:36
Joel Snyder: And The Flintstones, it may have description. I don't know.
37:39
Joel Snyder: I've never done it.
37:41
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I've never heard of it either, but that was my favorite cartoon growing up.
37:46
Joel Snyder: Sure. Sure. Absolutely.
37:48
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What would it sound like for you to describe the antics of Fred and Barney and
37:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wilma and Betty?
37:55
Joel Snyder: Well,
37:56
Joel Snyder: so much is happening visually there. Right from their clothes.
38:01
Joel Snyder: Kind of cave people clothes. Kind of
38:04
Joel Snyder: animal hide basically, but with color and designs and such.
38:10
Joel Snyder: And then there's the car that they used to use.
38:12
Joel Snyder: Which was
38:15
Joel Snyder: a human-powered car. They were puttering along by just using their legs basically,
38:21
Joel Snyder: cranking the car.
38:23
Joel Snyder: Funny things like that. And then there was their pet Dino—
38:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Dino and Bamm-Bamm and—
38:29
Joel Snyder: Bamm-Bamm the child.
38:30
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Fred's apples.
38:30
Joel Snyder: That's right. Lots of great things that could be described there,
38:34
Joel Snyder: and made
38:36
Joel Snyder: more vivid, more meaningful for kids.
38:39
Joel Snyder: The soundtracks are great, and
38:43
Joel Snyder: blind people grow up listening to soundtracks of shows.
38:48
Joel Snyder: And oftentimes description is compared to radio theater,
38:53
Joel Snyder: and I understand that comparison, although
38:57
Joel Snyder: radio theater assumes everybody is blind and we have to fill in the visual
39:03
Joel Snyder: with sound effects.
39:05
Joel Snyder: So they don't narrate those
39:08
Joel Snyder: actions.
39:10
Joel Snyder: You hear footsteps and so you know somebody's walking,
39:13
Joel Snyder: for instance.
39:14
Joel Snyder: So I sort of liken audio description perhaps to really high
39:20
Joel Snyder: quality sports play-by-play on radio.
39:25
Joel Snyder: Some radio commentators are just brilliant. They're just born describers.
39:31
Joel Snyder: And they have to be. Nobody's seeing anything.
39:34
Joel Snyder: They're broadcasting on the radio.
39:37
Joel Snyder: So
39:39
Joel Snyder: yeah, I think that's probably an even more apt comparison.
39:44
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: As a ice hockey enthusiast,
39:47
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I always marveled at how these guys on the radio— And
39:52
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I could picture myself actually being rink-side, you know?
39:57
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, my lord.
39:59
Joel Snyder: Well, a
40:01
Joel Snyder: not so widely known story
40:04
Joel Snyder: is about former President Ronald Reagan.
40:08
Joel Snyder: He began as a sports announcer in Illinois.
40:11
Joel Snyder: And there is the story about his broadcasting play-by-play
40:17
Joel Snyder: for a baseball game going on in New York City, and he was in Illinois.
40:22
Joel Snyder: So
40:23
Joel Snyder: he was getting on a ticker tape information about what was going on.
40:28
Joel Snyder: Ball one, strike one. Foul ball.
40:32
Joel Snyder: And he would take that data without seeing the game.
40:35
Joel Snyder: He would describe a game. He would just make it up and very imaginatively
40:42
Joel Snyder: create the game with words.
40:45
Joel Snyder: Even though he wasn't seeing the game [laughs] he just had the raw data
40:49
Joel Snyder: essentially. So
40:52
Joel Snyder: no matter what you may think of Mr. Reagan's politics,
40:57
Joel Snyder: he was an imaginative
40:59
Joel Snyder: broadcaster early in his career.
41:03
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I agree with you. I mean, I
41:05
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: did follow some of his politics, but I think this is another
41:11
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: new disclosure that I never knew about Mr. Reagan.
41:14
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow.
41:15
Joel Snyder: Well,
41:16
Joel Snyder: I mention that in my book.
41:19
Joel Snyder: If I may do a little plug, The Visual Made Verbal:
41:22
Joel Snyder: A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio
41:27
Joel Snyder: Description. And I'm quite proud that it's
41:31
Joel Snyder: available in braille. It's available in two different audiobook versions.
41:37
Joel Snyder: And it's now in print in seven languages with eighth one on the way.
41:43
Joel Snyder: So
41:44
Joel Snyder: it's a little dated. It's time for a second edition,
41:47
Joel Snyder: I think. It's about 13 years old. But
41:51
Joel Snyder: that's a project for me.
41:54
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, the clock is telling me it's almost time to go.
41:58
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But I wanted to ask you,
42:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: give me some predictions as to what the future would be for
42:06
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: audio description. What can I look forward to, as an adult especially?
42:12
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But I have a kid's heart, too,
42:15
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: you know? Yeah. Tell us. Tell our listeners.
42:18
Joel Snyder: Well,
42:19
Joel Snyder: I guess a couple of things. I look forward to
42:24
Joel Snyder: having audio description be incorporated within productions
42:30
Joel Snyder: from the very beginning. Having,
42:33
Joel Snyder: in different ways.
42:34
Joel Snyder: Perhaps a playwright can write a script so that it's descriptive as you
42:40
Joel Snyder: go along. And you don't have to add description to it.
42:44
Joel Snyder: Or maybe a describer is embedded within the cast and provides
42:50
Joel Snyder: description on stage or develops a script and is available to voice it at every
42:54
Joel Snyder: performance, something like that.
42:57
Joel Snyder: I would steer your listeners to Stevie Wonder's music video,
43:04
Joel Snyder: So What the Fuss.
43:06
Joel Snyder: When he wrote that song and then of course as folks did,
43:11
Joel Snyder: I guess still today, make a music video of the song.
43:15
Joel Snyder: Well, he decided that's gonna be described, you know?
43:18
Joel Snyder: And I cannot experience that song without listening to his friend Busta Rhymes,
43:23
Joel Snyder: a rapper,
43:24
Joel Snyder: voice the description that Stevie Wonder and WGBH wrote for the thing.
43:30
Joel Snyder: You can find it easily on the internet.
43:33
Joel Snyder: So What the Fuss by Stevie Wonder.
43:35
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: My Lord. [laughs]
43:38
Joel Snyder: Oh, it's a great piece.
43:40
Joel Snyder: And then
43:42
Joel Snyder: the other thing in particular is about the transmission of audio description.
43:46
Joel Snyder: In live theater and in movie theaters, and even at home,
43:52
Joel Snyder: I think the smartphone is gonna become central to the transmission
43:58
Joel Snyder: of audio description. Already,
44:02
Joel Snyder: for film, and if that film is on television, there are about a half dozen
44:09
Joel Snyder: apps available around the world that you can download to your phone,
44:14
Joel Snyder: and then you download to that app the audio description track for a film.
44:20
Joel Snyder: So if you're in the movie theater or you're at home and the movie comes on,
44:25
Joel Snyder: you click that app on, start play,
44:29
Joel Snyder: and the app listens to the original soundtrack coming from your television or
44:34
Joel Snyder: in the movie theater and will automatically feed to you through your own
44:39
Joel Snyder: earbuds the audio description.
44:42
Joel Snyder: So you could be doing it at home and your family doesn't need to hear the audio
44:46
Joel Snyder: description, but you're getting it, you know? And you can use your own smartphone,
44:50
Joel Snyder: your own earbuds in the movie theater.
44:52
Joel Snyder: You don't have to be worrying about the movie theater maintaining equipment,
44:56
Joel Snyder: that kind of thing.
44:57
Joel Snyder: That will become more ubiquitous I think.
45:03
Joel Snyder: And in live theater it's very rare, live events, but that's coming along as well.
45:08
Joel Snyder: I've been working with a
45:10
Joel Snyder: software company in Salzburg, Austria, called LiveVoice,
45:16
Joel Snyder: and
45:17
Joel Snyder: that needs to happen in live settings more often.
45:21
Joel Snyder: So I see that on the horizon as well.
45:26
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Joel, it has been a pleasure having you.
45:29
Joel Snyder: Oh, thank you, Donna.
45:30
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I mean it. I've learned so much in the last
45:33
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: few minutes.
45:35
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'd like to offer you also the opportunity to write a brief article or a
45:41
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: blog or an editor, whatever you want to call it.
45:44
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It's all about my trying to promote how different people are breaking down
45:49
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: barriers.
45:49
Joel Snyder: Okay, great.
45:49
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And what I will do,
45:51
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I will not edit your article or your blog or whatever,
45:56
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: but I will simply post it to our website and we circulate it.
46:01
Joel Snyder: Wonderful.
46:01
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I will be sending you an invitation in the next week or so.
46:05
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Interested?
46:06
Joel Snyder: Oh, I would be happy to.
46:08
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, we thought. Okay.
46:09
Joel Snyder: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now,
46:10
Joel Snyder: and when is your podcast made available and how can folks— So I wanna get the word
46:17
Joel Snyder: out about the podcast.
46:18
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, yeah. This is prerecorded and my associate Aaron Di Blasi,
46:24
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: he takes care of all the editing and all the technical stuff.
46:28
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And I think within a few days you will receive notification that it's out there,
46:34
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: and it is circulated to thousands and thousands of global listeners.
46:39
Joel Snyder: Oh, perfect. Perfect.
46:41
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So not to worry. [laughs]
46:42
Joel Snyder: Well, I will try and spread the word from this end as well.
46:46
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I appreciate it and I enjoyed this podcast 'cause I learned something new.
46:51
Joel Snyder: Oh, thank you, Donna. Thank you so much.
46:53
Joel Snyder: It's been a pleasure and an honor to be with you.
46:56
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You're very welcome. Thank you, Joel. And you take care.
46:59
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And look, wait for my invitation.
47:01
Joel Snyder: Oh, I'm looking forward to it. You bet.
47:03
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay, Joel. Take care.
47:05
Joel Snyder: Thanks, Donna.
47:06
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Bye-bye now. [upbeat music]
47:11
Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at
47:14
Podcast Commentator: donnajodhan@gmail.com.
47:17
Podcast Commentator: Until next time. [upbeat music]