Watching Without Seeing

FOR RITIK KUMAR, THE year 2009 was one of misfortune. Only 14 years old at that juncture, an accident on the playground, where a cricket ball struck him in the face, left him blind in his left eye. Six months later, a chickenpox infection robbed him of his vision in the right. For the next year, Kumar struggled with depression. “But I had to come out of it,” he says. “So, I started doing everything I used to before [turn­ing blind].” Now a 28-year-old who works for the Income Tax department in an office in Delhi, he turned his favourite Hindi language novels into audiobooks after finding software devices that could convert texts into audio formats. Before he turned blind, like many children and adolescents, a lot of Kumar’s life revolved around movies. He would catch the latest at a theatre at least once every month, and spend the evenings in front of a TV screen. Now, he began to invite friends at home and have them describe the scenes that would play out on the television. But more often than not, it would just be him alone in front of his laptop, listening to the sounds and dialogues of the films, and fill­ing the rest with his imagination.

“It wasn’t the best way to watch a movie,” he says. “But it was good enough.”

The blind in India have al­ways consumed movies and shows on TVs, and occasionally, using the assistance of friends and family even braved the the­atres. Their experience is limited, having to imagine the action unfolding on-screen or depending upon the descriptions provided by their companions. “But it is still something,” Kumar says. Depending upon someone else has its limitations. “The friend might think what is playing is unimportant. Or he or she may be too embarrassed to describe an intimate scene,” says Rummi K Seth, who is the cofounder and managing trustee of Saksham Trust in Delhi, which works with the blind. “But for the blind, it is all a void.”

But there is a growing push now to make the watching of movies more disabled-friendly. NGOs, such as Saksham Trust, are adding audio descriptions, which are audio tracks with run­ning commentaries that describe on-screen action. New technol­ogies in the form of apps are emerging that can enable the blind to attend movies in conventional theatres alongside people who have no disabilities. Several streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos are increasingly putting up content that allows their blind users to choose audio descriptions over conventional film dialogue and sounds. There has also been a legal push to frame directives around this. A few years ago, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued directives to Central Bureau of Film Certification (CBFC) to persuade film­makers to include audio descriptions and closed captioning in their films to make them accessible to the blind and the deaf. And earlier this year, when a group of individuals with disabili­ties approached the Delhi High Court pushing for the release of the film Pathaan with audio descriptions, closed captioning, and subtitles, seeking the enforcement of rights and accessibil­ity requirements guaranteed under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (2016), the court ruled that the movie must be released with these options on streaming platforms. The case isn’t over yet. The court has also issued notices to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting describing the petition as one that raises the important issue of accessibility of the ‘right to entertainment’. The matter is expected to be heard next month.

Several years ago, Seth was at a movie theatre with Dipendra Manocha, the other co-founder at Saksham Trust, and another colleague, both blind. She does not recall which movie it was, but still feels the frustration trying to describe sitting between the two of them what was unfolding on the screen while not disturbing others in the theatre. “When the movie got over, I realised, ‘My gosh, we have to do something about this,’” she says.

The first film the NGO audio-described was the 2005 release Black. With audio descriptions, every visible moment on screen that is important to the film’s narrative and mood is described, from moments of action and songs to quiet moments like the description of mood and facial gestures. To this reporter, who attended one such screening at a film festival some years ago, it felt almost like reading a book, with an omniscient narrator taking you through the film’s mood and plot points. There are of course challenges. All these movies have been made with the sighted in mind. The scenes of mass entertainers can move at blinding speed while those of art films plod. “There needs to be a balance. You can’t describe everything. But you can’t take the audience for granted,” Seth says. “You have to choose what to describe, how to describe, and it all needs to be done with the perfect lines, and with the perfect voice.”

When Black was screened for the blind, Saksham Trust had roped in scriptwriter Narendra Joshi to write the audio descrip­tion and used the voice of the veteran film and TV actress Su­shma Seth to serve as the narrator. It proved to be such a success that the NGO began to take on more audio description projects. Saksham Trust now audio describes and adds closed captions to benefit both the blind and the deaf. At special screenings, it even gets a person trained in Indian sign language to stand adjacent to the screen to translate the film for the deaf. Seth has a team of writers and narrators in place who she taps into, and they have added audio descriptions and closed captions for about 42 films until now.

“Projects that help them [the blind and deaf] with their educa­tion and enable them to lead independent lives are very impor­tant. But, I think, it is also very important that they can have access to entertainment like anyone else,” Seth says.

Usually, the NGO takes in the requests of the blind and deaf when selecting a new film to work on. Most of these are the lat­est movies. But occasionally, they will even work on old classics like Sholay. Earlier this year, Seth watched Pathaan at a theatre, wondering if the film could be narrated with an audio descrip­tion. Her verdict? “I’m sure it can be done. But I don’t know how,” she says, and breaks out into laughter. “There’s too much action and spectacle.”

But there are several challenges. Seth would like to take on more films, but each project entails quite a bit of cost. Also, there is the issue of access. Most of the movies she works on are shown at special screenings and film festivals. Activists have been cam­paigning for the availability of audio descriptions and closed captioning at conventional theatres, but this would require investments by theatre owners where at least a few seats come with earphones that allow the blind to have access to such de­scriptions. Often, many theatres do not show films with closed captions in the belief that movie watchers without disabilities will find the captions distracting and keep away.

But new solutions to these problems are approaching.

In 2012, Dipti Prasad, who had moved to India with her husband Kunaal after closing down their chandelier business in the UAE, was back in Dubai meeting her family. She had ac­companied her father to watch that year’s most-talked-about film—The Avengers. “My father is fluent in English, but he just couldn’t follow what was going on,” Prasad says. The movie was too fast-paced and the characters spoke so rapidly that Prasad found herself constantly having to help her father understand what was going on.

“The film had been dubbed in Indian languages like Hindi that my father would have been comfortable watching. But the way it works, this is restricted to one geographical location [India],” Prasad says.

Sensing a business opportunity, Prasad and her husband began developing an app that would allow moviegoers at a theatre to—by plugging into the phone via earphones—listen to the film in a language of their choice. It could be used by someone who wants to listen to an Indian lan­guage dub of a Hollywood film in Dubai, or even by someone within India, for instance, who could not find the neighbourhood theatre playing a Bollywood film in a lan­guage of their choice.

However, Prasad realised that the app could also serve another audience—the blind. “Just like an individual could choose to listen to an alternate audio track of the movie while sitting in a movie hall, we realised a visually impaired person can also listen to the audio description track while sitting with the sighted in the same movie hall,” she says.

The app—called XL Cinema—when switched on, takes about 10 seconds to listen to the ambient sound of the film be­ing played at the theatre and then syncs it with either an audio description track or an audio track of their choice on their app. Since it is encrypted and geofenced, Prasad explains, the app en­sures that audio descriptions and tracks of new releases become available only at that moment and at the location of a cinema hall, to ensure it doesn’t get leaked or pirated online.

XL Cinema has also developed a glass for the deaf, Prasad says, which when worn at a movie theatre, can show its user closed captions on the screen, dealing with the fear of theatre owners that when closed captions are played on screens, it will distract abled viewers. The product is ready and a patent for it has been filed, Prasad says. All it needs is mass production.

So far, the platform has audio description tracks of about 12 films. Earlier, studios would only agree to allow for audio description tracks after about three or four weeks had passed since the release of the film. “But I’ve put my foot down and told studios that un­less audio description tracks are not made available on the first day, first show, I won’t host them,” she says. Since then, tracks of films like Raw and Hacked have been made avail­able at the time of the film’s release.

“You have to change the mindset here,” Prasad says. India is home to a huge population of blind people. “Even if 10 per cent of that group is going to theatres to watch movies, that is a huge market,” she adds.

Prajjwal Branwal, a 23-year-old resident of Belthara Road in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, is one such consumer. He turned entirely blind for some unexplained reason when he was about nine years old. But over the years, with the help of some doctors, some sight has returned. He can see shapes, he says, and even the forms of human faces and writings on signages, but he can’t recognise facial features or read anything.

Branwal has been going to movie halls with his family mem­bers all these years while also watching TV at home. He asks those around him to describe the action unfolding. But there have been moments when he senses the frustration of individuals watching TV with him, who when asked to describe what’s going on, make up some excuse and leave the room. “I feel bad then. But I can understand they might be getting irritated too,” he says.

A few years ago, he went to a theatre in Delhi to watch the film Sanju with the audio description of the track playing on his phone. It is a day he will never forget. “I didn’t have to ask anyone. I knew everything that was happening. I was under­standing the jokes, I could feel all the emotions,” he says. “It was just so beautiful being there, following everything in the film.”

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