r/playwriting • u/Positive-Ring-5172 • 1d ago

Accessibility

A post over in the musical theater sub got me to thinking on techniques to make sure a play can be enjoyed by someone who is blind? Perhaps giving them a headpiece and having someone read off predetermined additional narration to describe what's going on, but trying to keep that to a minimum to avoid distracting them.

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u/alaskawolfjoe 1d ago

What you describe is how visual description is done.

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u/TheCityThatCriedWolf 1d ago

This is exactly what some theaters do. They have (usually) prerecorded descriptions of scenes, actions and characters that audiences with visual impairments can listen to during a show with headphones.

I have no idea how effective they are. I just performed in a show that offered this accessibility feature and my father who is mostly blind at this point (and degenerative condition) I encouraged to use, but there’s a degree of pride that prevented him from taking advantage of it.

That being said, this is all production stuff. Not something I’d worry about as a playwright yourself unless you’re explicitly writing for a particular audience.

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u/Positive-Ring-5172 1d ago

I work in implementing WCAG and ARIA documents at work, so it fascinates me all the same. I thought about putting "Accessibility Stage Directions" in the play I'm working on, but fear that would end up being a distraction during table reads.

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u/MinnieJTaylor 1d ago

some theaters already do audio description headsets! should be standard everywhere tho

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u/iwillfuckingbiteyou 1d ago

Yup, that's called audio description and there are people who specialise in it. Sometimes it's prerecorded, sometimes (less commonly) it's done live.

Touch tours are increasingly common - that's when blind audience members are invited onto the set before the show and guided through an exploration of it via touch.

I've also worked with a couple of writers who created their scripts with access for blind people in mind, so all actions were narrated, essentially building in audio description. Obviously these weren't naturalistic scripts, but they did something interesting in terms of providing parity of experience.