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DVDs with audio description → Listings → Notes
Updated 2004.11.04
Listings have now been moved to Wikipedia. You can not only read the listings there, you can edit them yourself.
A raft of DVDs were released without description even though the theatrical showing of the film was described, meaning the description track was already bought and paid for.
Yes, in some cases there aren’t enough bits left on a disc to make room for description, and it goes without saying that the first survivor pushed off the liferaft ought to be accessibility for the blind.
Yet this excuse does not hold for the majority of titles described under DVS Theatrical, the audio-description half of the WGBH MoPix system.
I’m just gonna hoover in the listings from NCAM’s own site:
Nineteen Imax films were described, but based on quickie Amazon searches, the following are the only Imax DVDs. (The Imax site is useless – as far as it is concerned, Imax DVDs do not exist, and its E-commerce arm is farmed out to Yahoo.)
The shockingly incompetent AudioVision Canada described Denys Arcand’s film Stardom for a public screening at a regular movie theatre – only the second open-described feature film I know about. (The other: A benefit screening of My Left Foot in 1990.) The showing happened exactly once with essentially no publicity at a cinema in my neighbourhood. (The only cinema in my neighbourhood.) I still missed it.
And guess what? No description track on the DVD.