Ep 2, S3 - The Art of Audio Descriptions: Seeing Through Sound Celia Hughes

This podcast is for city communications, teams and video professionals in government. We talk about expanding service delivery with video and streaming, media accessibility, gear, broadcast and streaming workflows and more. It's all right here on the Government Video Podcast. The Government Video Podcast is brought to you by MediaScribe from Tightrope Media Systems. Tightrope believes accessibility should never be an afterthought. It should be built in from the start. MediaScribe's award-winning captioning and audio descriptions is your end-to-end solution for accessible government video. Visit mediascribe.ai to start your free trial today. Today on the Government Video Podcast, we're diving into audio descriptions. It's the narrative layer that brings visual information to life for folks that are blind or low vision. And it's quickly becoming an essential need in government communications. We're joined by Celia Hughes, the Executive Director of Art Spark, Texas, a national leader in audio descriptions since 1996. They've worked on performances, exhibits, films, educational content, and civic events. Their mission is simple. Make the arts and all public content accessible to everyone, and I think that's something we can all get behind. Celia's background spans from the arts, to public affairs, to decades of hands-on work with folks with disabilities. She taught television production in New York City for kids who had have dyslexia. She directed cable television shows like many of our listeners and viewers, she's built an inclusive arts community in Austin, and her through line has always been about storytelling and access. So today we'll talk about what good audio description looks like. We'll cover how cities should approach audio descriptions for public meetings, and we will walk through an actual city council meeting and break down the audio descriptions that have been provided for them so folks can learn the lessons straight from an expert like Celia here. Celia, thanks so much for joining us today. Really excited about our conversation. It's delightful to be here. Thank you for asking me. So you've been involved in both the arts, side and the disability communities for, since a really early age. Can you share the moment where you knew your experience was gonna lead you into audio descriptions and the work that you're doing now with Art Spark in Texas? Well, that's an interesting question. I was thinking about that because I started working with people with disabilities you know, separately from the work that I was doing in the arts and I didn't really know early on that there was gonna be any kind of a, a way for there to be like cross pollination between the two, because early on, people with disabilities were pretty separated from society and there wasn't really a lot of attention being paid to include folks either as patrons or as participants in the arts. And so I sort of came upon that well as, as the world opened up a little bit more and as the ADA was passed, then people became much more a part of society. But, you know, when I was thinking about your question, I was thinking about when, you know, when I first started doing audio description, which was 25 years ago, I was asked to describe a movie and a cartoon called Kung Fu Panda. And, Big fan!. And, and I, I knew about Kung Fu and I had, you know, I had studied Tai Chi, which is not kung fu, but I had, you know, I had taken martial arts and stuff like that and just the thought of trying to describe that to someone who is blind and to do it when it's a panda and a cricket and a, and whatever the other animals were, I can't remember, was like, oh my goodness, how am I gonna do this? And I was just, I was describing it for the Texas School for the Blind. They had a, they have a weekend that's called the Sibling Weekend, where parents and the siblings of the residents at the school for the blind come in for the weekend and they do all kinds of activities together. And so this was a sibling movie, and so I was gonna be describing it to young people who were blind, who were there with their families. And I really wanted to do a good job, and it was my first movie that I had described and I had always said I wasn't gonna describe movies that I was just gonna stay in theater, but here I was. And so at the end of it, and I worked really hard, on preparing and really trying to make sure I kind of captured all of the action that was happening and the, and especially in the fighting and the kung fu fighting. And at the end of it, a mother came up to me and she said, I, you know, I want to thank you. This is the first time my family has ever gone to a movie together as a family. And her, her son, her son who was blind, who was probably 11, was engaged in this animated conversation with his other, with his sibling, his brother, about the movie. And I knew then that. I was gonna do this, that this was something that I was gonna continue to do because it was not only fun, I really find joy in it. But it was really important work that it was for the people who were blind out there and for their families and for the people who care about them. That's such a level of impact, you know, for a family to sit together and watch a movie, that could be something that sighted folks take for granted. Absolutely. Yeah. Just being able to bring that family together. That's amazing. What a great, like, origin story. So let's talk a little bit more on, on Art Spark, Texas. So been providing audio descriptions since 1996. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. 96 so long before, most organizations even knew what audio descriptions were. What has driven your sustained commitment to that work for nearly three decades? Well, when we, we started, because we had some pretty proactive individuals here in Austin who were blind and they would attend their national conference, the American Council of the Blind. After one converse, they came back and they had a video cassette, and of To Kill a Mockingbird. And they were like, we, we want this. And it was audio described. It was an audio described cassette of To Kill A Mockingbird. And they were like, we want this in Austin. We want audio description. And there happened to be a woman living here at the time who had come here with her husband. He was in school at UT and she had been involved in DC with audio description in the theater. And so they had been doing it in the theater. And so she was like, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And she was kind of surprised 'cause we have a very large population of people in Austin who are blind or visually impaired because the school is here and Austin is a fairly accessible town. You know, And so people come here. For the school, they also come here for the Chris Cole Rehabilitation Center is here where people who are, who acquire blindness late in later in life, over 18 will come to learn, orientation and mobility skills important for people who are blind. And so they've learned their way around Austin because that's part of their training. So they stay here. So Betty Siegel was like, well, I don't know why we shouldn't have audio description, so, let's do that. And I just, I was involved, you know, on the periphery, but he was a friend of mine and I, when I was introduced to it, I thought, well, this is pretty cool. I really like this. And again, you know, you, it doesn't, you ask why are we still committed to it? 'cause there are still people who are blind or low have low vision who really benefit and want the service. And every day is something meaningful like the, like the family with Kung fu Panda every day it's, you know, we're bringing this experience. Creating an equitable experience no matter if it's in the arts or a city council meeting, you know, it's creating something that's equitable for everyone to actively participate. And I, I'm, I think that that's a very, I think that's an important aspect of our society, that we want everyone to participate and I continue to find describers who are passionate about it, and who want to learn description and do description, and we continue to get feedback from our patrons, as to what a value add it is to their lives. So it's like, of course we're gonna remain dedicated to it because it's it brings it, bring it, it brings us so much joy and it, and it brings, joy to other people. That's fabulous. So, so let's just, you, you mentioned it that, you bring on audio describers. So you also train audio describers and you help organizations kinda build sustainable accessibility practices. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Like what your methodology or your pillars of recruiting audio describers and things you're looking for. Yeah, I've kind of changed over the, over the years about how we recruit people. And in many ways I've changed, of course, from the very beginning when we used to train people. We know so much more now and I've, you know, I've trained for a while. So, learned some better techniques as to how to, how to train people. But, you know, we usually, in order to recruit, you need to, you know, you need to find people that have a fairly good, command of the language because you've got to be able to speak in real time. You know, and now of course the, you know, there are, there are more and more recordings, but you still have to have a command of the language and to make it interesting and to make it descriptive. And so I look for people who are, are able to see things, to look at a bigger picture that are not narrowly focused on one aspect of a picture, but, or, or of a, of an event, but can actually take in the whole event, and can have, have the, excuse me, that can analyze kind of in a quick time period what it is they're looking at and try to prioritize what it is, what's important and what isn't important. And, and so that's how I've boiled down my trainings. I'll let, I, you know, I'll accept anyone into a training, but then do, through the process of the training becomes, it becomes pretty apparent who has a natural skill, who understands it and can learn it, and then who really is gonna struggle, you know? And, and that can be pretty made, pretty apparent, pretty early on through the training process. And, you know, and I just do, I just use. Three core skills of, you know, of learning how to observe something, learning how to analyze something, and then learning how to talk about it and communicate it. And, that's, you know, that's the methodology and, you know, and I, and if people follow that methodology, then they're gonna be able to provide, i'm not gonna say brilliant description, but they're gonna be able to describe, at least adequate description for, for the event that they're, that they're participating in. So Celia, we have a lot of government folks that listen to this podcast. City council meetings aren't exactly like theatrical experiences, or movies. Some can be! Yeah, that's true. I have seen a couple. So how would folks at Municipalities think about audio descriptions and the approach in a civic context? Well, I think that, people that are describing or that, you know, that kind of video needs need to keep in mind who their patron is. And so they, they have to keep in mind that we are, we as sighted people take very, very much for granted. What our site, what we are taking in through our, through our senses. And so people will sit back and kind of like not really pay attention to what's happening in the room. You know, kind of sorta listen to what's going on. But they can, they can process it because their site is taking in many things and providing them with a lot of ancillary information that adds meaning and context to the, to the meeting. And so I think that, if you're involved in that, then you. As a, as a person that's describing it, you have to become actively engaged in what it is that you are looking at, and you, so you have to not only be actively engaged and looking, you have to be actively engaged in listening because you have to make the connection between what you're seeing and what you're hearing. And so it, you know, and so there, it, it may be, well this. A city council meeting is just people getting up and talking and the council, you know, passing resolutions and things like that. But there are things that are going on in the background that may add some context to what is being discussed. There are people in the audience that may give context to what is being discussed. And so as the describer, you wanna keep your person that's listening to this city council meeting engaged. And so if there are long periods where people are shuffling around or people are moving in and out and everything, you wanna cont, you wanna say what's going on? Because that way you're keeping the listener actively engaged in the meeting. Otherwise they may drift off, not pay attention. And then when the meeting starts again, they're not, they're not there. They're, and they may miss something that's important. So that, I think that's part of it, is just keeping your the listener or the, the audience member actively engaged in the meeting at all times. Because as a sighted person, we are, even if no one is talking, we are basically actively engaged because we're looking around, we're seeing what's happening, and so we're taking in that information. And so we wanna try to create that equitable experience for the patient who is blinder or visually impaired. I think that's a great take on it. The being engaged in it. I used to produce the city council meetings as a kid. And so I remember like there were times where I would kinda, you know, on off and la la land and it wouldn't be as good of quality. So it makes sense for folks to be engaged on the level of what is happening in the meeting to able to get those audio descriptions. So let's talk about the art of describing. So it's filled with all of these micro decisions, right? What to include, what to leave out, how to stay neutral. I know you've talked a lot about what that means. Can you share a little bit on your philosophy on balancing clarity with brevity? Right? We have to fit it in those little sections. Well, that's where a command of the language really is important, because, knowing words that you're gonna be able to use that concisely define something rather than having to talk all around it with sentences, trying to explain what's going on, is important. So really, developing a vocabulary. If you have particular, you know, if things that you know happen in the city council meeting, if you've got particular aspects of council members that you know, they're always gonna behave like this or whatever, you can start to think about what are some words that I can use to describe this or you know, and so that you've got those words already in your vocabulary and more easily accessed. But my philosophy really is, if I have time to develop my script, which I think a lot of the work that you do is that people are watching the, the council meeting after the fact and adding the Correct. Yeah. They're not doing a live description. Then, then you have an opportunity to really first, capture what it is you're seeing, capture what it is that you. Think you wanna describe and then really playing with the words so that it's so that you're making it interesting so that, but you're, but you're actually also selecting the words that are going to most accurately describe what it is that you're seeing. And, and a lot of that just comes from practice, you know, and not doing your first take. So you watch the description, you write your, you write, I mean, you watch the video, you write your description, you let it sit there for a little while, your brain is already gonna be processing it, at least my brain does. And then when, and then it'll go, oh no, I need to say it this way. And then I'll go back to the script and I'll rewrite it. Or I'll read it out loud. That's also really helpful. I read out loud everything that I write and I'm like, how does this sound? Can I say this? Okay. You know, am I tripping over words? And so, and that also because what we, when we write it and just read it silently, it's very different than reading it out loud. And so I always read out loud what i've written, and inevitably I'm like, oh no, this needs to go first, or I need to, I need to move this, the, the structure of the sentence around, or I need to cut this whole piece out. And, because you write so differently than you speak. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's great advice for folks to, you know, write and then say it out loud, see how it feels, let it marinate. That's awesome. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast, you might also like our webinars. We host live sessions where we dig deeper into topics that matter to media makers and government, like accessibility, compliance, automation, all of it. Join us live to ask questions or browse our on demand library whenever it fits your schedule, click in the link in the show notes to check out what's available. So we have a fun little exercise we're gonna do, Celia. Okay. We have a video that's been audio described of a city council meeting, and the folks are going to view that meeting and I'm gonna ask you some questions about the audio descriptions throughout that scene. What do you think of that? I think that's a great exercise. I'm looking forward to it. Title card. Pittsfield City Council. Pittsfield City Council Chambers, June 25th, 2024. Now with closed captioning. A group of people sits at a long curve table in a formal meeting room. Each person has a laptop and nameplates that indicate their roles. In the background, flags are displayed and a large screen hangs on the wall. An audience of attendees. Reaching the hour six o'clock. Pittsfield City Council will now come to order. Please rise for a moment of silence. People rise from their seats and remove their hats. Councilor Costa, will you please leave us in the pledge? Please see the flag on the United States of America. And Now therefore, I Peter m Marchetti, mayor of the City of Pittsfield, on behalf of its citizens and city officials to hear hereby congratulate the Pittfield High Girls softball team on all their athletic accomplishments in the 2024 season. The man shakes the coach's hands. After the audience applauds, a sector leaves their seats and other people take their place. You have something. Thank you very much. Have fun passing it around. Item number two, Madam Clerk. Therefore, I, Peter Marchetti, mayor of the City of Pittsfield, on behalf of the citizens and city officials, do hereby congratulate the Pittsfield High School boys baseball team on all their athletic accomplishments in the 2024 season. People stand and applaud the boys leave their seats. Deborah Simonetta walks to the podium. The seats in the room are mostly empty now. Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm gonna give your name and address, Deborah Simonetta, 612 West Schenatic Okay so you saw the city council meeting clip and what stood out to you visually that was absolutely needed to be described? You know, I, first off, I think the Describer did a fine job, you know, and, but there were, you know, I would, I took notes and you know, but overall, I would have liked to have known when the Well, first off, when they said there were flags in the room, I would've liked to have known what flags there were because they were, they were, and, and it made sense 'cause they stood up and they pledged allegiance to the flag. But the American flag wasn't even in the picture that I was looking at. So, you know, I, I think that maybe, you know, to, I'm being, I'm gonna be very nitpicky. I'm gonna say this right now. Yeah, totally. So, so maybe say there's an American flag in the room, so when they pledge allegiance to the flag, we know that that's a flag. It just said there were flags in the room and I think there must have been a city flag. I don't, I didn't even, I didn't recognize what the flags were. There was that. Then, the first recognition that they did from the, from the podium, was for a I believe it was a, so a softball team. And I don't know, maybe people assume that softball teams are women. I don't know. But it was young women, but we didn't, they didn't even, they, they didn't even mention women, young women, until the very end when they said that these were the first time these young women won or something like that, and the Describer said, there were young people in the audience and the only thing you could see at the time were all young women. Now, there were young people. Because on the opposite side of the aisle there were young men. Because the next team that was recognized was the, was a baseball team of young men, but I would've, I wanted the describer to say, young women in the audience to immediately establish that this award that was, that was being given to young women, because that wasn't said until the very end the, of the, award. So that would've been a simple, just say instead of young people in the audience, young women in the audience. And, then the, they got an applause and the council members all stood. No one in the audience stood, but the council members all stood. I would've liked to have seen that. I would've liked to have known that, that the council members all stood to applaud. Then there was a whole bunch of scramble and noise, and he did say at the beginning, that the guy that was given out the award that the, he pointed to them and said, they have someplace to go afterwards, or I'm gonna do this really fast, or whatever. And, and they all got up to leave. But there was a scramble and noise and chitchat and there was nothing. There was no, so I would've liked to have known that the, you know, that half the audience just left the room, you know, because by, by the end of the, by the end of those, they gave out three awards. They gave out a softball, a baseball, and then they gave one award to a young man who had won medals at the Special Olympics. By the end of that, those three awards, there was hardly nobody left in the council chambers. And that's kind of interesting, you know, and they make a comment about it, you know, but I think to get people, you know, one of the rules of description is get people in the room and get 'em out of the room. You don't wanna leave 'em in the room if they leave, you know, because it's confusing and it's not fair to people who are blind to think that they're talking to somebody that's not there anymore. So that would've been, 'cause there was scramble and there was noise, and at one point, the council members were having their own conversations among themselves and it, the microphones picked it up, but you couldn't really hear, you didn't really know what was going on. So I would've said something about that, that the council members were talking among themselves or something like that. Just to give, to give some understanding to what this, what is this conversation that's happening, where is this coming from? And that, you know, you know, that was, you know, again, there were sometimes they brought people to the podium, sometimes they didn't. You know, I think establish a protocol. That if people are coming up to the podium to speak, bring 'em in because there, there was plenty of time. There was plenty of time. And also say things when they're actually happening. The describer said that there I can't remember it in a moment. The Describers, oh. It was when the boys were getting their award and it said something like, they, they get their award and and they leave. Well, that was said. But then there, then they came up, they got their award, there was chat chitchat, applause, all that kind of stuff. And then the boy leaves. So the boys leave. Well, you have plenty of time. So say they leave when they leave, don't say they've left before they've even got their award. So you know, you've got, there was plenty of time in that, 'cause there was nothing happening. There was no talking. So again, just time your description so that it's better placed with when the action is abso is actually happening. And again, these are really, you know, these are really the nitpicky things, but Well, I think it's, it's important to know, the nuance of it. I was curious, You've gotta get into that practice. You gotta get, get into the practice of saying something is happening when it's happening, if you can. And in this moment you had plenty of time to say, 'cause there was kind of like, they all kind of got, they all kind of got dismissed and they all like all got up and just sort of disappeared and which, you know. But again, just to say that they're leaving. 'cause then you hear the hustle bustle and all that kind of stuff and it makes more sense. Sure that makes sense. I'm curious on your take on the first section with the title card, so the audio describer says all the text that's on the title card. Yep. And then describes the city chambers before the chamber showed up. This is probably a, a use case that a lot of our viewers will experience. I'm curious on what your what your thoughts on that approach is. Thought that was fine. Yeah, because as soon, because you had that, because as soon as the chamber arrived, the meeting has started, so you don't have time. So it was set up and and um, you, I don't know if, if there. I don't know if it's important to say that the entire council is present. Sometimes there might be absences. I don't know if that's announced at the beginning, you know, but you know, that might be important information to set up ahead of time. But yeah, no, I think the reading of the, I thought the reading of the title cards and the setup of the chambers was fine. I don't know if people recognize or understand that the, that the council chambers are this, in this particular instance, the council chambers are in an oval and that the clerk was sitting in the center in front of them on the floor. That's, you know, every city council is different, and so sometimes the clerk is at the end of the diocese. Sometimes the clerk is on the front row of the, of the, of the chambers. So maybe, maybe that, you know, to also set up, set that up and say, you've got your so many city council members and then the city clerk. 'Cause the city clerk really is the one that manages the agenda and all of that. And, and so Yeah, but I thought, I thought that was, it was very clear, in terms of setting it up and you don't have time. Once the council, once the meeting starts. And also, I think they also said, if I recall, did they say that they stand They did and took off their hats. Yeah, they did that in the moment. I think they, I think that was, they did that when that was happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was, I noticed, well, since you brought that up, the standing and removing of their hats, I noticed that they said people rise from their seats for the Pledge of Allegiance. They didn't say that. They said people rise from their seats and remove their hats. So what about the nuance of that? 'Cause I think that could be something, folks would just say they rose for the Pledge of Allegiance. Is that a big a big deal? Well, you know, it's more accurate to say they rose in their seats and removed their hats because didn't, didn't, did he ask them to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? He might've. He might've said that. Or, you know, I. He did. Yeah. So you don't have to say it 'cause it's already been said. So you're just saying what's actually happening, which is they're standing up and one guy took off his hat, but I be, well all the, all the boys in the front row. 'cause they were all wearing ball caps. They all took their hats off. Good. The good baseball team. Well, one guy was late. He was, he was like, oh, I was supposed to take my hat off. I also noticed that the describer didn't describe any clothing or emotion. What's your take on that? Not important. Clothing is not important unless, unless it's important, you know, and that seems kinda silly, but you know, unless somebody is in traditional, African, you know, dress or, you know, native American regalia, you're gonna wanna say that. But if they're just in their everyday street clothing not important. If it's a, and get, you know, getting into, I don't know if this is your next question, but getting into, race and ethnicity. You know that's a tough one. But if you are you know, I, I think in this situation, because as far as I could tell, the majority of the council members were Caucasian and there was one, one man, I wasn't quite sure, but again, I don't know the ethnicity or the, or the race of any of these folks, but they, they were obviously, to my eye, no, no ethnic, no, you know, brown or, or black skinned folks. If they're being addressed by a member of a different race, then maybe that's important, depending on what the issue is, I don't know. But, but it, that all is really a judgment call. And it's all really, depending, depends on what the topic is, and whether or not this is important to the topic, but if people are up there in their everyday clothing, it, you know, it takes up if it's gonna take up too much time. And if it's not pertinent to what's being talked about, then I would say leave it alone. I do recall you saying that, for meetings, like if it was a subcommittee on diversity, equity, and inclusion, that be a use case for saying folks' race. But typically it's not really necessary unless it's got that context tied to it. right. So, Like I did notice the one woman, the first woman who spoke, who was probably a council regular, she's probably there every week. That's just my assumption, but you know, maybe wrong, she walked up and so the first thing she did was push her glasses up onto her forehead. I would've said that, just 'cause it gives a little idea of who she is as a person, you know? That and, but I wouldn't go in, you know, she just was wearing a, you know, embroidered blouse, you know, a little cowboy blouse, I think with snaps and embroidered and, and she had white hair. But that, you know, if you had time, if it took her time to get up to the podium, if she was on a walker or something like that, then you, you have a little time to fill you could, you, you could put that information in. But the only thing that I picked up that I would've probably just said was that she pushed her glasses up on her forehead. 'cause that's unusual. Not a lot of people do that. At least I don't think that a lot of people do that. I don't do that. So, It's so interesting. I feel like audio describers have this super power of attention to detail, to, to be able to see that and remember that and know that that is something that, you know, no, that could have done that. I love that. I think that's great. well. I dunno if all describers are as obsessed as I am, but so we have a lot of folks that are kind of on this accessibility journey, especially min municipalities right now. Three things they should prioritize right now around audio descriptions. What do what do you think, Celia? Woah, three things. Okay. Follow The agenda and follow the conversation and really, make sure that everybody knows what's, if the clerk doesn't read the agenda item and you've got the agenda in front, in front of you, make sure that everybody knows what you're, talk, what they're talking about. They skip around pretty fast. Make sure that you keep people engaged in the meeting. So if there are gaps in conversation or if just if things are happening in the room, the shuffling around, you're just, you know, mention it. Don't go, you know, you don't have to write a treaties on it, but you, but, you know, and keep people engaged in the meeting and keep them actively engaged so that they're not gonna miss something that may come up. The, the very reason that they're watching this meeting is 'cause they wanna know when they're gonna be talking about item 13, which is the pool in their neighborhood. You know? And so make sure that they know that, that they know, okay, we're at 11, you know, we're gonna, we're getting close to 13. So keep people actively engaged and keep it so that it's not, you know, keep it free of opinion and judgment. You know, really just what is it that you see, you may feel really passionate about one of the items on the agenda. And just try to keep your passion, you know, use words that are not going to maybe try to influence people in one direction or another on the issue. Try to remain as neutral as possible. I I feel like that's a, a world municipalities live in pretty regularly. Yeah. so, but that it's always good to have the as a a good guidepost. So looking ahead, how do you see the field of audio description evolving with, we've got new technologies coming out, increased awareness around ADA Title II, definitely increased since the the nineties. Well, what's what's your take? What's your hot take on it? Well, AI is becoming more and more active. I recently did a art crawl with a bunch of folks who were blind and visually impaired. And, we went to a number of different artists studios and so we were trying out, Be My Eyes AI which is a you know, it's been around for a while. It was created originally to help people get through airports on their own where they, and because that was, you know, they would have a live person at the other end of their phone. They would be holding their phone up and a person would read the signs in the airport and guide them through and stuff like that. It helped people read their, tell them what color the clothing is so that they're, you know, they're putting together clothes. I mean, people who are blind have always had ways to mark their clothes so that they would know what color they wore and things like that. But be, Be My Eyes really has stepped up the game in that, as it were. And, and then Be My Eyes AI is now, you know AI. And so you can hold your phone up to, or what you know, to a painting and you can ask it to describe it to me like I'm an art historian, or describe it to me like I'm a painter. And so you get all different things, and, and that's kind of exciting. It's also kinda scary to the, to the, you know, live describers. But it, it's definitely, you know, that's something that, you know, I'm impressed with and I see coming. Meta glasses are another one. These are glasses that people wear. And, and again, not as detailed as a live describer would do, but gives you the basics and keeps you safe, you know? so, you know, that's kind of exciting. You know, there's a lot there. More and more people are becoming more conscious, conscious of what they say. And so when you're on the radio, you hear a lot more description. When people getting doing reporting, they actually describe what it is that they're talking about. Which, you know, 10 years ago that wasn't even happening. So, yeah, I think, you know, I think that things are definitely moving in the right direction in terms of including more and more people who are blind in the visual world. And I think that, as more and more of people develop the confidence and gain the knowledge and skills, 'cause as I like to say, you know, blindness is about access to information. And so the more information that people are blind gained, the more confident they are to venture out into different situations and where they might not have gone before. And so more and more people are gaining also aside to people are gaining the knowledge and skills as to how to include people who are blind in their, in their daily practices. You know, it's not unusual to see someone who is blind walk into a store and, you know, want to look around as they say and buy things, you know, so, so I think it's all good, you know, and, and you know, in terms of audio description right now, I've been working with a group for six years. We've been working to develop a certification process for audio describers. Similar to what ASL interpreters, ASL interpreters have the registry for the deaf and the deaf interpreters. And so it's similar to that and, we hope to, we're, we're in the beta testing process of it right now and so we're hoping to have that out in about a year or so. And the reason we wanna do that is to professionalize audio description, but also to sort of concretize professional standards because we want, you know, because, because there, there are there's bad description out there, and bad description is really and what I mean by that is, just description that is, doesn't follow the basic rules. You know, that talks over what people say that tries to get people to think a certain way that, you know. That doesn't, that gives inaccurate information or gives incomplete information. So we're trying to make sure that we can address that through the certification process that everyone all describers at least have a basic level of knowledge and a basic understanding of the, of the principles of audio description so that we can make sure that we, that we, can assure people who are blind or with, who are visually impaired, that they're going to get, an equitable, as equitable as we can experience, as the sighted person. What a, a great project. What a noble project to be able take that undertaking. 'cause I can't imagine like the the level of detail it goes into, like yeah. projects. Yeah. We were, we've been doing this for six years and when we were first recruited, we had to apply the members of on the team. We had to apply and we were told it was gonna be a two year. Maybe a two year project. We're six years into it. We've lost half our team, you know, because it's just, you know, 'cause it's been, up until recently, it was a weekly meeting for two hours. And you know, you get people in the room that are like me. We have a lot to say about, about things, but I think we've covered every single possible possible scenario. I don't know, maybe not, because every day something new pops up and you know, video games are being described and, you know, so it's just, it's, you know, I think the people that started to do this had no concept of how broad the field of audio description is because again, we take our sight for granted. We have no idea, we of the information that, that, that populates our brain every second of the day that our brain processes and make sense of. And when you start to parse that out and say, oh, you begin to realize, ooh, there's a lot to audio description. You know, a lot more than just, say what you see. You know? It's, uh, Sure. It it is. It's multifaceted. 'cause you have the live stuff, recorded stuff. It's so many things on and on. Yeah. Well Celia, thank you so much for your time today. This has been such a lovely conversation. Always new insights, and I'm sure our viewers and listeners are going to love your analysis of a city council meeting because that's really what they're looking for right now. So thank you for your time and energy. You're welcome. It's been fun and, and have fun out there describing your city council meetings. There always, there's always something happening and we appreciate everybody for doing that, you know, because we need, we need a little bit of order to our chaos in this world and that, that comes through city council meetings and, and the work that you do. So thank you. What I hope listeners take away from this conversation is that audio descriptions isn't just a compliance checkbox. It's storytelling, it's inclusion. It's a way for cities to make their public meetings clearer and more accessible for everyone. Art Spark, Texas has been leading this work for nearly three decades, and the care and intention that your team brings to every project absolutely shows Celia, if you're a city leader, a communicator, a AV manager, or someone responsible for your public meeting videos, this is your moment. Start small, start thoughtful, but start now. Audio descriptions isn't the future, it's the expectation. Thank you again, Celia, for helping us understand not just the how of audio descriptions, but really the why. And for everyone listening, if you found this conversation helpful, make sure to subscribe and share this with a colleague who's thinking about accessibility in the community. And thanks so much for listening and watching, and we will see you next time.