Shine Lifestyle
15th February 2019
They are all ears at movie screenings
Imagine what it would be like to go to the cinema and hear a film but not see the scenes or know what’s going on when there’s no dialogue.
That’s the barrier for the blind and people with severe visual impairment.
Han Ying, who dreamed of making movies when she was young, is now fulfilling that ambition in a way she never expected. Blinded two decades ago due to an eye disease, she now heads up a team that makes movies accessible to the visually impaired.
Han is director of the Shanghai Voice of Light Audio Description Culture Development Center. Her team writes descriptive scripts for non-dialogue scenes of movies and has professional announcers record them onto extra soundtracks. Copies of the edited films are then copied and sent to communities through top-box sets.
Every year, Han’s team turns 50 movies — mostly domestic productions — into barrier-free films, including some of the latest blockbusters.