2022-02-13 00:08:50

What the title says. I've got versions of all of these without description, and whilst I can mostly keep up, description would still come in incredibly handy. I've checked you know where, but they only host the original TV series along with a few more modern ones. Another site I'm sure you'll all be familiar with does seem to contain a little bit of what I'm looking for, but they apparently haven't figured out how to organise their stuff properly so finding anything takes several years.
Needless to say this exchange should perhaps be held off forum, via PM's or similar, but this site is the biggest collection of blind people I know about who share these interests.

2022-02-13 11:29:49

I've been looking for the same for quite a while, especially TNg.
I own all of ds9, tng and voyager on dvd, but none with descriptions, I regularly check a certain well known website whose name is associated with underground places, but as Hailey said, no luck.

I'd love to share the series with my lady, but can't due to lack of description, so if there is anywhere to get the episodes with description, please send me a pm as well.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2022-02-13 12:14:57 (edited by lemm 2022-02-13 12:25:24)

Hi,

Although I don’t know where to find these, there is a Facebook group set up for discussions on audio description, so it might be worth asking the question there. It’s not a group I belong to, so I’m not sure how helpful it'll be, but I guess it can’t hurt asking there. I’ll put a link to the Facebook page below, also below that I’ve put some links to resources (all legal) which show which films and tv series each of the current streaming services currently have with audio descriptions, so it might be worth checking those to see if any of them  have any of the Star Trek  series you are after.

Facebook audio description page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AudioDe … iscussion/

Disney Plus titles with description
https://adp.acb.org/disneyad.html
Apple TV Plus shows with Audio Description
https://adp.acb.org/appletvad.html
Netflix shows with audio Description
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/25079
Amazon prime audio described Movies and TV shows
https://adp.acb.org/amazonad.html
iTunes audio described Movies and TV shows
https://adp.acb.org/itunesad.html
UK Freeview audio description TV show Schedules
http://www.tvhelp.org.uk/audes/schedule.php
Broadcast TV with Audio Description
https://adp.acb.org/tvschedule.html
Movies in the theater or on DVD with audio Description
https://adp.acb.org/movies.html

sorry, just edited the post as previously the links weren't showing.

Paul

2022-02-13 12:19:44

I'm curious, what are the current legalities of Audio Description tracks? I mean, obviously there's the copyright issue with distributing episodes with integrated audio tracks, but what of a service of creating a standalone description track?

On that note, there's also a few lists of audio description services [here] and [here], though not sure if they'd touch commercial TV/film programming.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2022-02-13 12:21:40 (edited by targor 2022-02-13 12:23:12)

Same. The original series is fine (up to a certain part in season 3 where it suddenly stops), but no luck with TNG. Fortunately, at least TNG is very easy to understand most times without AD.

I'm a bit confused: If we all mean the same website, what do you mean with "it takes ages to find anything"? You enter the name of the show and the site gives you results.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2022-02-13 12:57:58

@4 regarding rights, not sure about the idea of creating a service which would create a separate track and then keep it in sync, though I think that would be relatively safe especially if you'd need to supply the original movie/TV show yourself. For commercial description tracks, this is where you run into problems and why so much of the trek description is now lost.

A description track can be ordered by a completely different company than the original studio which made the show. This especially happened with UK TV channels like Sky ordering description for US shows because British law requires much more content to be described. But because the description wasn't made by the original studio it very often isn't included when a show goes to streaming or gets a DVD release. A perfect recent example is game of thrones, which for the longest time could only be legally watched with AD on UK TV, while everywhere else it was available without description because HBO didn't care about accessibility or audio description. This only changed after they got sued by I think the American Council of the blind and lost.

Which brings us back to Star Trek which is a similar story. The little recorded 90's trek we have floating around also appears to be description made for I think Sky in the UK. Then either whoever was recording didn't do it consistently, or Sky didn't describe every episode which is why we just have a handful of random episodes preserved. The original series descriptions were also made for UK TV, this time the sci-fi channel and it's a similar story there. THis funnily enough also happened as recently as with Star Trek Discovery, which at first launched exclusively on CBS Access in the US, and as a Netflix original everywhere else. Netflix at this point really payed attention to describing anything that was an original, so for Discovery's 1st season it had AD on Netflix and absolutely nothing on CBS which caused a bit of outcry. THis eventually changed and now the renamed Paramount Plus has all the new trek series described, which is good because they took them off Netflix.

So the best we can probably do is try contacting Paramount to ask for this. I'm not sure if they can recover the old Sky tracks for these shows (I vaguely recall the 2 companies are merged in some way now). However I'm not sure how possible this is, in which case they'd have to make completely new tracks from scratch. Considering we're looking at hundreds of episodes and days of audio for what's now over 30 year old material I guess they don't think it financially worthwhile, beloved as it may be.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2022-02-13 13:25:27 (edited by magurp244 2022-02-13 13:33:25)

Hm, well thats frustrating. The question of legality is a bit tricky because i've heard of instances of publishers going after fan translations of some media for copyright infringement. Then again this is more descriptive work, and described video may fall under the Marakesh treaty and similar accessibility provisions, in which case you may be able to get volunteer(s) or someone to sit down and draw up descriptive tracks. Could depend on a number of other factors though.

Wonder if something like Be My Eyes would do a live service of something like this.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2022-02-13 16:36:23 (edited by haily_merry 2022-02-13 16:38:20)

@5, I was talking about a different site which does not contain such a feature. They do appear to host random clips from Voyager / TNG / DS9, but it's way too random and also difficult to find amongst all the clutter anyway. The site you were thinking of unfortunately just host the original TV series along with much more modern TV releases.
I doubt be my eyes would do this, but Ira might. Unfortunately that's way outside my budget at the moment. Also getting the screen to show properly would get... pretty tiring. Plus I tend to binge watch, which they probably wouldn't be happy about.
I've been working my way through voyager and it's fairly easy to follow, there are just those weird moments such as action sequences, not to mention long periods of silence where it's obvious something is going on on screen. The fact that they're almost always relaying orders and telling each other what they're doing helps a great deal, though. I'm totally blind as well.

2022-02-13 20:13:36

I had a link to a stream which had described star trek shows, but the stream doesn't exist anymore i think. If you go to wikipedia and search for the shows, sometimes there are the episode listings and every episode is described (the plot gets told in very great detail).

2022-02-13 22:09:59 (edited by zkline 2022-02-14 02:05:51)

This is a bit of a round-about way of doing things, but I have access to shooting scripts for, I believe, TNG and DS9 and possibly Voyager as well, though I don't recall for sure. They have a lot of detail on what's happening and are a decent substitute until audio descriptions can be provided. I don't know where I got them but suspect with a bit of Googling you might find an archive.

2022-02-13 23:43:53

There's also chakoteya.net which has transcripts of all of the older Star Trek series. The description of what's going on is good enough to follow along. Doctor Who stuff is in there too.