More 4 seems to be free of audio description and even subtitles. That is not acceptable. We want audio description for the blind member of our family who has so far missed out on the Sopranos, and I want subtitles on The West Wing - as someone said, they mumble a lot and subtitles are needed to get the gist.
Forgive my curiosity, but how does audio desciption work - does it not interefere with the dialogue? Especially with something like the West Wing where the dialogue is crucial and often non-stop.
No, the person doing the audio description takes care to avoid important speech. If you're blind, the trade off is knowing what's happening on-screen and not knowing, and trying to work it out from speech. 70% of information is conveyed visually so huge amounts are lost with no vision. Try it yourself by closing your eyes and try to work out what's happening by listening. For example, the scene in the hospital where the character writes a note with the word "scared".
More 4 is failing to serve blind people by not using audio description. Audio description is only available on Sky digital, not on freeview.
More importantly, imagine what a blind person without audio description would make of the scene with Leo McGarry in the final few minutes of the second episode?
A deaf friend of mine is devastated to find that, despite having Closed Captions in the US, the Daily Show (which she'd been looking forward to seeing for months) is subtitle-less on More4. It can't be that hard to convert them can it? Would anyone from More4 like to comment on the situation with subtitles?
