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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2021 - 03 - 16 - ID#m6klr4
6
Suggestions for tv viewing (self.Blind)
submitted by shane400m
My father has been blind for 40 some years now (severely damaged optical nerves that rendered him fully blind after a 2 story fall) and he loves movies/tv shows. I’ve since moved out of the house, but I wondered if there’s any devices or articles anyone suggests that could help him navigate streaming services? He loves the echo dot I got him back when it first launched, but the fire tv stick is rather limited in what it can do (sometimes will launch show or movie, sometimes pulls up the search and he’s confused why it doesn’t play said movie/show)

I appreciate any and all help. He is an amazing man and an even better father and I hope to give him back as much of his independence as I can.

Edit: these are all awesome suggestions! Thank you all! My father is definitely a movie buff, and since he’s older it’s hard to explain the whole “streaming service war” to him. I’m so grateful audio description is a thing that’s more common now, even outside of dvds (our local theatre has special headsets that play audio description)
etalasi 5 points 2y ago
$1 in 2017.

$1 is from last month by the American Foundation for the Blind.
shane400m [OP] 1 points 2y ago
I’ll give this a look, I appreciate it!
TodesKoenig 3 points 2y ago
Hello! The above recommendations are great, we use Netflix and Disney+ with audio descriptions in our household and it’s so great to be able to keep in touch with some of the current movies and TV shows since the stories are amazing! Amazon prime and Hulu also have select programming with audio descriptions so that might be worthwhile as far as checking out. Another recommendation, in case your father is familiar with movies from a while back is audio vault. They stream basically only the audio of the movies and no video content is stored on their site so he can basically listen to an MP3 of a movie while enjoying a nice day out or something, he might be able to also follow along with you in case the movies on that site or a bit more current. This is how my wife and I enjoy some of the more recent movies and TV shows. You’ll need a membership to be able to log into it but all they require is a email and password. Check it out, hope this www.audiovault.net helps your dad!
shane400m [OP] 2 points 2y ago
That’s a great suggestion! I’ll look into it! He loves movies but doesn’t have the ability to do it fully independent yet (he wanted to watch coming to America 2 and tried to explain that it’s on prime streaming service) but I think plain audio would be great! Right now I’ve helped him learn how to switch hdmi sources to the fireTV stick and to ask it to play cheers as it’s one video that plays instantly instead of pulling up the search menu)
TodesKoenig 1 points 2y ago
Right on! Hope it helps, best of luck to you and your dad
AutisticPearl 2 points 2y ago
Also Disney plus is good to.they have description.
shane400m [OP] 2 points 2y ago
Ooh that’s a good point! My fathers huge into superhero movies, but before description he couldn’t tell what was going on amidst the punches and explosions.
Prefect316 1 points 2y ago
If your pops likes superhero movies and has never experienced audio description, a Disney plus subscription will change his life.

You can turn on VoiceView with the FIRE TV stick by holding down the back & menu buttons for a few seconds. It narrates everything on the screen for him and he just arrows around. Take some time and explore it with him. He'll definitely have questions but will be able to navigate his tv much more independently, and all with the inexpensive FireStick.

Good luck and let me know if I can help at all.
shane400m [OP] 2 points 2y ago
Oh he loves audio description! I only figured to show him it a year or so ago (he has trouble picking up on new things) but he is so thankful for it and our local theatre even has special headsets that privately narrates the movie for him :) we watched endgame and it was the first hero movie him and I got to go see opening night and understand together (usually I sit in the back with him and quietly narrate what’s going on the screen)
Prefect316 3 points 2y ago
I can't express how thankful I was to experience that moviewith audio description in the theater. When we hear "On your left," and all the superheroes come back to help Captain America, the whole theater erupted in a huge cheer and I was able to cheer right along with them.
AutisticPearl 1 points 2y ago
I'm not exactly sure how to make it work but it's not that hard I don't think
80percentaccurate 1 points 2y ago
I really liked showing adults how to stream from their iPhones. It was fairly easy to do a search using Siri for a particular show to find out what streaming services carry it then if that streaming service is an app on the device you can ask Siri to go directly to that show. If Voiceover is on the description will also start automatically if available. A little Voiceover ability is needed, but not an intense amount.
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