Blind Mice Mart's Movie Vault
www.blindmicemart.com

Are you tired of asking your friends to describe scenes when you get together to watch a movie? Do you want more DVS (Descriptive Video Services)? Check out Blind Mice Mart's movie vault for thousands of recorded DVS movies in mp3 format! There is a wide variety of movies, from black-and-white oldies to modern favourites like Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series (six of seven). Best of all, the movies are free. The only downside is for people with some usuable vision; because the movies are in MP3 format, they are audio only. Therefore, there is no visual. This has not been a problem for me (I'm unable to see what's on the screen anyway), my friend who has some residual vision (he has 20/200 vision), or my sighted friends who "watch" these movies with me. Because it has DVS, which describes all the important visual actions (such as someone gesturing instead of speaking), seeing the movie is not necessary for enjoyment. In fact, a few of my sighted friends have told me that they prefer these DVS movies because it lets them use their imagination more. I think of them as half way between an audio book and actually being there.


Go to the Blind Mice Mart website at www.blindmicemart.com, go down to the heading that says “Blind Mice Movie Vault,” click on that, and you'll go to the movie vault page in a seperate window. It is seperated into headings that are easily navigated by screenreader users. The actual download part takes a little getting used to, though, because of all the advertisements in the download page.

On the Movie Vault page, the next from last Heading gives basic instructions for downloading. I do one thing different, and that is that when I get to the Sendspace popup window after pressing “Regular Download,” I press the N key (for non-link text) until I hear “Note” and arrow up. There is a blank line, then a graphic, another blank line, and the next line is the download link. I find this faster than tabbing up from the bottom.

Another Note: Some of the movies are categorized differently. For example, while Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is under the C Heading, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is under the T heading (for The). So, if you don’t find the movie you are looking for at first, try it under alternate alphabet headings. So, you might look under the S heading for “The Sixth Sense,” but it’s under the T heading for “The,” and while some of the Agatha Christi movies are under A for “Agatha,” some are under the actual name of the movie (for example, the Number heading for “13 for Dinner”)

If you have any trouble with the DVS movie vault, let me know, and I’ll see if I can help! Enjoy your movies and being able to talk to your friends about the movies you watched and could actually understand.

Look for future posts in this blog about:
The National Library Services’ DVS services
Movie Theatres that have DVS
Organizations’ work toward access to DVS for theatres, DVDs, and television programs

When these posts are added, I will make the above into links.