‘The Wiz Live!’ First Live Entertainment Show Accessible To Visually Disabled People
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Deadline.com reports that Comcast announced it will include a national video description pilot program with NBC’s broadcast of Broadway musical The Wiz Live! on December 3, making it the first live entertainment program to be accessible to people who have a visual disability in this country. Video description is a narration track that is included between the natural pauses in dialogue that describes the visual elements of a show or movie like facial expressions, settings, costumes and stage direction.
NBC has scheduled the special to premiere on Thursday, December 3 at 8 PM ET. Not coincidentally, December 3 also is International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an international observance that has been promoted by the United Nations since 1992.
“Earlier this year, I attended a theater production of The Wiz and, without description, found it very difficult to follow the characters and action of the play,” Carl Augusto, CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind said in today’s Comcast announcement. “This nationally described television broadcast will not only be a godsend to people with vision loss, but also to those who describe action to people with vision loss, and the general public, who will learn about the importance of audio description.”
