Copy of The Audio Description Gap – Why big organisations have small aspirations for Audio Description targets.
- Apr 4, 2025
- 9 min read
With the rate things are going, we will be living on the moon before Blind and visually impaired people can access TV and film easily. But to the many large organisations, it seems leaving their home comforts to live on the moon is more enticing than even entertaining the thought of making their programmes accessible. But leaving our opinions and bad experiences aside, what is making these organisations cower away in fear from audio description while valiantly conquering the quota with the provision of subtitles?
Audio description (AD) is an accessibility tool which provides a narration of key visual aspects of a video and is often used in films and TV shows. The tool provides access to thousands of Blind and visually impaired (VI) users in the UK every day. Many would not be able to access TV or film without it, meaning they miss out on key cultural moments.
AD is a simple idea which, when done well, provides context and key information; it doesn't just benefit Blind and VI individuals. From helping people keep up with the names of characters and interpreting facial expressions, to keeping your mum quiet by answering all her impending questions; AD has a very wide range of users and will hopefully become more popular in the future.
With the most common search for AD being "How do I turn audio description off?”, it might not have the best reputation, but for many it’s a lifeline that we could not live without.
Having heard all of this, you’d think companies would want to provide AD for as much entertainment as possible; after all, there are over 30,000 Blind and VI people in the UK...
1 in 5 UK consumers have a disability and businesses lose around £2 billion per month by ignoring their need for adjustment to the services and products they provide. 73% of disabled customers face barriers on more than one quarter of the websites they visit; considering streaming and video on-demand services are all online, it’s easy to imagine how much potential profit these companies could be flushing down the drain.
Paralympic bronze medallist Scarlett Humphrey was born with the genetic condition Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA) and nystagmus which means that, for her, she is completely blind. Her and her twin sister, Eliza, joined the VICTA changemakers; a group of young, Blind and VI people who are passionate about raising awareness for blindness; sharing their stories through videos, podcasts and articles for the sight loss charity, VICTA. Scarlett said, “I don't really go to the cinema much anymore, because when we were younger, I don’t know that many films and stuff had audio description. So, I think in a way, I've kind of been put off watching films.” This is the case for hundreds of visually impaired people across the UK; in a recent survey conducted, 100% of participants felt that there is “not enough” availability of AD.
Without the provision of AD, die hard Star Wars fans (like Scarlett) must turn to other methods to fully feel the force, “My brother would just describe what was going on” Scarlett said, “So, I think we got used to that. But then obviously when you get older, you realise that's not normal, and I felt bad asking people to describe it. So, I kind of stopped watching.” Scarlett and her friends are at the mercy of their family members’ attention spans, and many can feel disconnected from British culture and entertainment.
To understand why many people experience this issue, we need to look to the role of Ofcom (The Office of Communications). Ofcom is a government-approved regulator responsible for overseeing broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and the postal industry in the UK. Its responsibility is to protect the public from offensive or harmful content and to advocate for our interests as the consumers. Under the Online Safety Act 2003, companies are all legally responsible for keeping users safe online. To hold media companies to account, and make sure they take on these responsibilities, Ofcom has many powers including the ability to fine companies who don’t follow the rules.
The audio description scene has changed drastically in the last 20 years and the highly anticipated Media Bill 2024 meant that all on-demand and streaming platforms will be expected to provide subtitles on 80% of their programs in the next ten years, however the targets for audio description seemed to have missed the mark and sit at a measly 10%.
Image description: A line graph showing the difference between targets for the amount of Subtitling vs the amount of Audio description. The top line is blue and represents Subtitles, It starts off at 10% for the first to second year and then jumps straight up to just under 40% then again past 40% up to 60% where it stays for a year and then up to 70% and finishing on 80% in the 10th year and onwards. The bottom line represents audio description and starts just above 0, it climbs about 2% every year and stops on the 6th year at 10% where it stays. The difference between lines is stark and they don’t touch at all with Subtitling climbing rapidly and AD’s line being almost straight across highlighting the gap between provision
To give them credit, many of the largest broadcasters like the BBC have already produced more than the current quota, with BBC Three managing to audio describe 62.8% of their content.
Image Description: a bar chart showing the percentage of audio description and subtitling required vs the amount achieved by 9 BBC channels. There is a large difference between subtitling and audio description with subtitling reaching 100% on every section wheras audio description provision only reaches just under 40% on most other than BBC three which achieved over 60%
The missing bars on the graph signify channels which are exempt from providing audio description, due to the little amount of space in dialogue, where audio description would be impossible/ not needed.
These numbers do look good compared to the 10% quota, this doesn’t seem to represent the experience of Blind and VI users themselves. In a survey we conducted on social media, 5 in every 6 Blind and VI respondents expressed that they frequently go to watch programmes only to find they are not audio described.
A circular chart showing that 58.3% of respondents answered All the time when asked "How often do you go to watch something only to find out it's not audio described" 33.3% answered Quite often and 8.3% answered not often
In the same survey, programs that had frequent negative mentions included the popular show, Traitors which reached an average of 7.4 million viewers on the finale alone, was a big moment in British culture which many respondents to the survey felt that they missed out on, uncloaking the second issue of the AD space because these programmes did in fact already have audio description.
We reached out to the BBC for comment but received no response.
A Channel 4 spokesperson said: “Channel 4 has widespread audio description services across linear TV, more than 50% of hours broadcast on its five main channels, including its top shows. Audio description services vary on streaming services depending on the viewing platform. The level of audio description in a show can vary depending on the gaps in dialogue and what is seen on screen. We are working with the RNIB on a quality panel workshop to source feedback from users and we always welcome feedback via Channel 4 viewer enquiries.”
Sonali Rai, The Media, Culture and Immersive Technologies Lead at the Royal National Institute of Blind people (RNIB) explains that quality is often overlooked for quantity. “There are no quality thresholds,” she said, “Ofcom have the code of best practice, and these providers try to comply.” This lack of guidance might make Ofcom’s job seem redundant to the untrained eye.
An Ofcom spokesperson said: “TV and on-demand programmes should provide an equally fulfilling experience for all audiences, regardless of disability. Our best practice guidelines – which are based on extensive engagement with user groups, industry and accessibility experts, a public consultation and large-scale qualitative research – set out how broadcasters should make sure they are delivering high quality access services. And when things go wrong, we’ve shown that we will hold broadcasters to account.”
“The difficulty with AD is that it is an art form and therefore it is subjective. What I like and enjoy might not be what you like and enjoy.” Rai said. As with many art forms, fixating on the numbers doesn’t usually prove very effective, but there is a competitor that has taken the AD world by storm, steaming past major broadcasters in the process.
“Netflix has come in and has almost transformed not the way they [the audience] listen, but the way description is structured and how it sounds.” said Rai, “It's more immersive, it's more emotive...which I think is what people are enjoying.”
According to the audio description project, as of 1 April 2025 Netflix have 2778 titles with audio descriptions, “Netflix's listing of foreign AD titles is huge! They have 6548 titles in over 50 languages!” the Audio description project . As of 2024 Netflix had overall 8,086 different titles so roughly 34.35% of the English language titles on Netflix are audio described. This is in line with other services, but the biggest difference is in the quality of this description. According to Netflix’s website, “It [AD] is available for most Netflix original titles and many other TV shows and movies. We are always working with studios to make them available for more titles.”
With that many titles on one platform, it seems relatively impossible to find out how much it would cost a big organisation to audio describe their content. Ofcom collected data in 2021 to estimate the costs of providing access services. This helps assess whether broadcasters can afford to meet their obligations, by spending no more than 1% of their relevant turnover. So, for a broadcaster who make around £5 billion per annum, this could be £50m going towards accessibility. The estimated average cost of audio-describing one hour of programming is £1500. Based on a broadcaster producing 30,000 hours of content, the cost of audio describing 100% of those hours would be £45m; 0.9% of their estimated turnover.
However, this doesn’t consider that some channels are exempt, Some of the content produced will be repeats or already made accessible. And some of these won’t need AD at all. So, while this number is likely to be very far away from the real deal, it’s definitely a lot less than this 1%
Turning away from the largest organisations we can lock in on the smaller names who are proving that anyone can be accessible when they put their hearts into it and care about the topic. The Everyman theatre in Cheltenham may not be a huge broadcaster or streaming platform, but they have tackled the issue head on with the added difficulty of performances being live and face to face with their audience!
Jenny Wicks, acting team lead and audio describer at the Everyman Cheltenham, gives some insight into how they do it so well as a small theatre
Jenny and her team prove that if they can replicate this on a small scale, organisations with earnings soaring into the billions should be investing in more jobs, opportunities and chances to speed up the current slow progress.
There is a lot that can be done to remedy this, because although good audio description is subjective, there are lots of features that can provide a good target. Rai explained about two of the most important of these:
Audio Mixing is very important... “that's very white and black. Either the mixing is good or it's not. Either you can hear the description, or you can't hear it”
Is the information being delivered correct or incorrect?
“So 60% [of audio description] I'd say is about acceptable quality, but there are certain providers that need to do better.”
Because audio description relies on the gaps in dialogue, this begs the question, Do directors and producers have a role to play in accessibility? Even Shakespeare had it nailed; with hundreds of examples in his plays of how he incorporated the stage directions into his scripts. The famous line, “I bite my thumb at you” is a great nod to this. There may have been many reasons for this, including to make actions on the stage clearer for those sat further away but it is a prime example of how audio description is not the only solution. In films, the acting, music, and sound effects are an all-round immersive experience for everyone. But for Blind and VI people the reoccurring themes in the music representing different some characters, the swells, lulls and tension caused by the soundtrack all come together to illustrate more than you’d think; pair it with the right level of emotive description, or even voiceovers, and you get rid of the need for audio description. This vastly changes from genre to genre, but when the magic of TV and film does its thing then everyone can join in without investing millions into the description. But that doesn’t come without education first, Rai said, “I think we have been very optimistic if we think that they [Directors] are aware of something called audio description… I'm not sure how many of them know that subtitles exist.”
Without the team leaders and biggest bosses being aware of topics like audio description, it will continue to appear like the largest organisations aren’t using it at all. But at the end of the day, behind the veil of these huge companies are small groups of passionate individuals battling with a very complicated mixture of lack of time, funding and awareness to make sure their audiences are included. These will be the people that will wave goodbye to the spaceship heading for the moon and continue to work towards accessibility on the rock we already call our own. They can only try their best to squeeze their way into the CEOs echo chambers and if they manage that, we will be one step closer to giving quality audio description a place at the table.
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