Old or new, in any language in the world, cinema is a visual medium, which due to its very nature stays out of bounds for the visually challenged. Also, dialogues and soundtrack are vital to a film that the hearing impaired can't fathom.
To transcend these real difficulties are audio described version and captioning. An audio described film has a verbal commentary embedded in the movie that lets visually challenged people hear descriptions of what is happening on screen. Likewise, the hearing impaired can read captions to piece together the story.
In Jamshedpur, 35 visually challenged and 15 hearing impaired youngsters on Thursday attended the screening of the 1982 Richard Attenborough film Gandhi, the first film with audio description and captioning to be shown in the steel city.
Read more of this effort by Ranchi-based NGO Lakshya for Differently Able in a report published in The Telegraph....
