Bring more audio description movies to the iTunes Store petition.

By Blinky2012, 25 January, 2016

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy

As I am legally blind, I would like to see audio description provided on many more movies in the iTunes stores for people who are blind or vision impaired.
Many DVDs have audio description on them, but they require someone who is sighted to go into the menu section, select the language option and turn the audio description on. If the audio description is available for a movie on DVD, then iTunes should make it available in their stores. iPhones and iPads are becoming popular in the blind community, and are used by both adults and children, but at the moment there are only a very few movies in the iTunes store with audio description. Providing more would be incredibly beneficial for people who are blind or vision impaired, as we can download them directly to our iPhone or iPad, then the voiceover that comes with all Apple products will read out the movie title for us. This way we could keep all our audio described movies in one area on our device, as well as allow us to access the movie on the go or in our free time without having to rely on sighted assistance to turn on this feature for us.
Last September I took Apple to the Human Rights Commission about this problem. After a conciliation meeting between myself and Apple, they told me that this has not their responsibility, it’s up to the main movie distributors. I don’t think that’s a good enough excuse. There are obviously no technical issues with putting audio description on iTunes, and Netflix has a lot more audio described movies in its Australian store.
information on what audio description is can be found hear www.audiodescription.com.au/

So please sign this petition and help get more audio description on iTunes.

https://www.change.org/p/apple-itunes-blind-and-vision-impaired-community-to-provide-more-audio-description-movies-in-the-itunes-store?recruiter=363922732&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/news/petition-launched-for-more-audio-description-on-itunes
Audio description movies update keep signing we now have three more audio description movies in the Itunes store to locate these type in Audio Description or look for the list of audio description movies on this applevis website

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Comments

By Ray on Friday, February 5, 2016 - 12:10

Hi.. Just signed it... Fingers crossed...

Cheers for setting this up..

Ray

By Ekaj on Friday, February 5, 2016 - 12:10

I haven't signed yet but will do so soon, and I'm going to try and post this to the Twitter account for my job. I was wondering where to find these movies in iTunes and now I know.

By BVI Pilots on Saturday, March 5, 2016 - 12:10

I think the one thing that some of us forget to notice is the producers have to aprove any movie placed on the net for sharing, and so on. I do agree that there needs to be more, and not so ahrd to get our hands on. This is also why im sticking with the blind community, and excited for what the company is going to bring to the table soon!

Hello I'm not sure if you have checked out the link to the list of all the movies that I have added on this website with Audio description but since I have had the petition going there is now three more AUDIO DESCRIPTION movies now in the iTunes stores. And these can be located by typing in Audio description on your iPad or iPhone search field in the iTunes stores. If you can't find the link to the movies I have added search in Google list of audio description movies Applevis and they will come up.
And I have also updated my petition but it is still going as well

By Fred Brack on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

Apple has listened, apparently. There are now 140 movies with audio description on iTunes. Instructions for finding them are at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205742, and I maintain an alphabetized list of them at http://acb.org/adp/itunesad.html.

By Ray on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

Hi.

Is that just in the U.S iTunes? Certainly here in the UK, there isn’t 140 AD movies, more like just 40.

Great that Apple is listening, but we still have loads of axes to grind.

Cheers for the update.

R.

By Fred Brack on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

Ironic, isn't it, that the UK has been so far ahead of the USA in providing audio description in various media, and now on iTunes Apple gets a jump. Yes, it's USA only, just like our listing of audio described Netflix titles (at http://acb.org/adp/netflixad.html) which currently lists 150 programs. I have no access to lists for other countries.

By Toonhead on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

Usually these petitions don't work, but it's a wonderful idea. I do think we need to be realistic, and remember that you're gonna run into these issues where iTunes may have an audio described movie in one region but not another one. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite right to me so hopefully, this will get there attention. That leads me to my next thing, though, in order to really make a splash, you're going to have to get a lot more signatures. One of the earlier posts mentioned that it had 45 signatures. Unfortunately, you're going to need a whole hell of a lot more, i'm talking hundreds if not thousands. Apple is a huge, huge company and they're not going to do something simply because a few people think it's a good idea, myself included by the way. I know, it may sound like i'm raining on your parade here, but I'm really not, I promise. The more audio-described tv shows and movies we have, the better off everyone is. Also, sometimes it really is up to the producers, because they have to have contracts that allow for this sort of thing. The people who describe the shows have to be chosen, descriptions have to be written and recorded, this is a process. It's going to take a lot of work but I hope this is successful!

By Joseph Westhouse on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

I want to commend you for seeking to bring greater access to audio described movies, and I hope the results are even more than you could expect. But I just wanted to share my take - I recently looked at the audio descriptions page on the iTunes store and was completely blown away. Not only does it look like most any release that's now coming out with AD on the physical disk is also releasing with AD on iTunes, I saw several titles on there that I've never seen with AD, including a couple that I have in my personal collection and am now sorely tempted to buy on iTunes just for the AD. The most exciting part was seeing titles from WB which, of all the major studios, seems to be the worst when it comes to consistently providing description on new releases.

By Fred Brack on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

In defense of Warner Bros (at the present time ...), after I and others argued with them for a year or two about adding description to DVDs, they finally began doing so exactly one year ago. Now they offer description on almost all of their mainline DVDs -- but on none before May 2015. Lionsgate is pretty iffy on described DVDs, and studios like Anchor Bay, Magnolia, and Weinstein offer none. You may find some of their described movies on iTunes even though not on DVD.

By Mitchell on Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 12:10

I apreciate what you guys are doing, but how is it Apple's fault? The producers can control what audio description goes on their digital movies.