It's TV, except it's not...

“You’re watching blindy TV…except you’re not, because you’re blind and it’s not TV.” During one of the faux-mercial breaks, you might hear this said. This seems to sum up what blindy.tv is in a nutshell. It’s not television, and you’re not watching it in the literal sense. It’s television programs over an internet stream with an audio-description track, sometimes also called DVS or descriptive video services. So what is blindy TV really about?

The Basics

As an organization, blindy.tv is completely charitable and completely volunteer-based. According to their website, they “contribute freely of [their] time and resources to provide a free described television programming service to those that are served by neither commercial products nor government programs.” To explain it further, it’s audio-described television for blind people who can’t see the television but miss out on what’s going on because our own country doesn’t provide the service or it’s not readily available. For me personally, I have television but I don’t have the cable box necessary to turn on audio descriptions for the few shows that have it. Unlike closed captioning, audio description isn’t something you can turn on or off on your television in the United States, but have to turn on/off through your cable box, through a maze of menus that blind people can’t navigate without sighted assistance.

Channels and Shows

The project, called “blindy TV” to signify that it’s offended by the lack of audio description in the mainstream and thinks you should be too, is a compilation of TV shows from the few countries where such programming is available, such as the United Kingdom. Some of the shows are quite old (I Love Lucy comes to mind), while others are previous episodes of ongoing shows like CSI and How It’s Made. There are currently five channels. Comedy brings shows like Two and a Half Men, I Love Lucy, and brief stand-up comedy skits. Drama delves more into CSI, House, and a newer addition, Revenge. Sci Fi beams you into Star Trek, Life on Mars, and the Vampire Diaries. Brain brings a mix of described and undescribed educational shows of various topics, though the recent update now has it favouring described content. Finally, Etcetera is just that, a bit of this and a bit of that. I’ve heard game shows like the Match Game and reality shows like Hell’s Kitchen. There are over 120 shows played regularly on the streamed channels, and going to the individual channel’s page gives you a schedule of the channel, though the channel playing in the background can make it hard to hear the schedule with a screenreader.

Connecting

What’s most exciting about blindy TV is that it can reach such a wide audience. Anyone who has a good internet connection can listen to the channels without any added hardware or software. It will run through their web player, Windows Media Player, iTunes, or any number of media players. If you have an iPhone, you can stream it through iTunes by clicking the “Listen to…” links. Another method of listening is through the iBlink Radio app (it’s under the “Community Radio” category). This app, available for both IOS and Android smartphones, provides a direct stream connection.

The Unfortunates

Blindy TV has its own set of problems, however. The biggest one I’ve encountered is the connection. Listening to my favourite shows, I am often disappointed when the connection hiccups and I have to reconnect, missing out on part of the episode I was watching. The people at blindy TV have been steadily working on and improving this issue, but it remains a major issue. Another unfortunate about the program is its episode age and variability. While a large number of newer episodes and shows have been added recently, there still remains a large portion of the streamed content that is older episodes and some shows are played at a much higher frequency than others. This is due to a lack of audio-described content being available, an issue that you as a listener can help to improve.

How can you make a difference?

Want to improve the variability of shows on blindy TV? Have a favourite show you’d like to see added to the schedule? The first thing you can do is contact blindy TV with your suggestions or comments using their contact form. Another method of helping is getting more and/or newer shows audio-described. If you have a favourite show or TV channel and want to see their content audio-described, contact them and ask. It can’t hurt, and it has already led to new audio-described shows being available. My current project is the Disney channel and TLC, the former because I feel children should have more access to audio descriptions and the Disney channel is one of the most popular kids’ channels and the latter because I have always loved their content and think it would give blind people a whole new playing field to work with in the categories of home design, fashion, and much much more. I decided to do this after watching a YouTube video encouraging people to contact broadcasters and ask for their content to be made accessible. Together, we can increase the number and variety of shows available in audio description and thereby help blindy TV expand their collection.

Final Thoughts

Blindy TV is a great resource, but it is truly the ghetto of television, as blindy.tv describes itself. It’s not accessible mainstream television; it’s not access to the same episodes and shows at the same time as our sighted friends and family…sometimes, it’s not even access at all. But for the time being, I feel it is the best option if you want television shows with audio described and aren’t lucky enough to live in a country where audio descriptions are readily available. For now, it’s what we have and we should be grateful for that, but we should also be offended that we don’t have access to real-time mainstream television. We should be offended, and we should take action. Are you with me? Add your comments about whether you use blindy.tv and/or want to make a difference. What shows or channels are you willing to approach and request audio descriptions from?