The meeting was attended by members of ADA, in particular VI members, and 2 representatives from ITV, David Padmore Director of Accessibility and Matt Simpson head of technology in the access team,

David Padmore explained that his role meant he was responsible for subtitling and audio description as well as accessibility of technology and digital services at ITV. David has worked in this area for over 30 years.

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He explained that ITV had been thinking about live audio description for some time, but the death of the Queen had led them to double their efforts. This meant that they developed a technical solution that enabled live audio description of the King’s coronation. The benefit of this solution is that if audio description is turned on, it simply works. The solution has been adopted by other broadcasters since then and there has been interest from overseas.

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Guinness approached ITV to discuss how TV coverage could be made more accessible based on the work they were already doing in stadia. ITV decided that a completely separate audio descriptive solution was needed given the amount of speaking that happened during the standard commentary and the lack of space for an audio describer to interject.

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In 2024 there were two matches that were audio described. The first used a combination of sports commentator and audio describer. Feedback suggested that viewers found that the experience wasn’t giving them consistent access to the game. As a result ITV decided to try someone with more experience of audio description. They chose Dave Rogers who was trained by Alan March and had experience of describing rugby in stadia. The experience was vastly different with him being able to provide what was needed.

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One comment that has been made concerns having 2 commentators and this is something that they are open to. A single descriptive commentator does provide a clean experience and there would be cost implications to having a second one.

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Another comment was around the balance of stadium sound, referees’ microphone and describer sound. This is something they will look at.

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They’ve received over 125 emails from different people providing feedback as a result of the email address accessibility@itv.com being given out during the commentary.

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Matt told us that they were working on finding a resolution to enable catchup access to audio described sporting events on ITVX in the same way as other programs. This isn’t a simple thing given the involvement of an external company and the need to remove certain elements from the recording.

Going forward they would like to add audio description to the Women’s Euros this summer, the men’s world cup next summer – both football – and continue to describe the Six Nations.

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Comments made by participants included sound balance, the importance of providing audio description because of it being useful to the non-blind and the non-expert, the difference between radio commentary and audio description, advertising audio descriptive commentary going forward, being able to watch/listen with sighted family members, pre-match introductions whether pre-recorded or delivered live and feedback on UEFA’s descriptive commentary delivered via the UEFA App.

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Thanks to David and Matt for coming along and responding so positively to our questions and feedback.

 

If you have any comments on this subject please email vigroup@audiodescription.co.uk

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