This is definitely a thing.

We used to have a setup where I could listen to the AD and he didn't have to, but when we changed TVs a while ago for some reason it went away and we never really felt like it was a big enough deal to set it up again. Probably we could, I guess. It involved having a separate standalone tv decoder which I think is now in the attic somewhere. It's not perfect, you get an echo between the two, but it's close enough for a sort of shared viewing experience if you like.

It wasn't a big deal for us because we just don't watch that much TV and that's not because I can't see it, it's because of the quality of TV! What we do watch is mainly the news which usually doesn't have AD and mostly doesn't need it. On the odd occasions we hit something I'm not getting, these days all I have to do is make a sort of under the breath questioning noise and he'll explain. On the very rare occasion I sit down on my own for a movie I will obviously put the AD on.

Don't know if there's really a solution for netflix. There isn't an obvious way to do different sound for different people other than just hitting play on two devices at once.

It's actually pretty hard for a sighted person to watch a movie with audio description. It's almost like a sensory overload issue, especially with action movies. One thing we've done is using separate headphones. You can either do it with a split jack or Bluetooth. We have an apple TV so one person will use Bluetooth to listen to the TV and the other person can use headphones and listen from another device such as thier phone. There's also an app called Access by Spectrum and they have a decent library of audio description tracks that the VI person can listen to with headphones while the movie is playing out loud. The track will sync itself so it works pretty well.

I am totally blind, and who are yu kiding I don’t like audio discription myself. I think it’s kind of interruptive. So yeah... but not sure. Not a fan of t.v. ANYWAY.

Encourage them to take up knitting or something. My husband is blind and I rarely look up at the screen. Win-win.

If I'm watching movies with someone, I don't use audio description. I can easily see how it would be annoying to listen to, so I only use it when I'm watching alone.

I just make a mental note of anything I was unsure about and search for it after we're done watching.

My family has some hearing issues, so they use captions. We are quite pathetic, captions and audio descriptions. But it does well for us!

It will just take a while, you may feel self conscious which is why you are trying to find a solution, but eventually they will adjust and be just fine. Otherwise, you can try to get it on your phone and then just match it to the movie then listen to your headphones.

I actually love audio description even though I can see (my partner is blind), but one possible suggestion is headphones? Blue tooth headphones, depending on how you’re watching headphones that plug into the remote (some rokus do this).