The ADNA Presents

The ADNA
  • 5.0 (12)
  • TV & FILM
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The Audio Description Network Alliance presents this interview series with professionals and other experts.

  1. 3D AGO

    Dr. Cynthia Bennett Part 2: What We Lose When We Stop Describing Things to Each Other

    Something went wrong during a live show. An aerial performer fell. The Audio Description professional described it as it happened. Then told the audience the performer was okay. No script covered that moment. No algorithm was ready for it. A human was paying attention, and that made all the difference. Dr. Cynthia Bennett is a blind researcher at Google who studies what happens when technology is built without the people it's supposed to serve. In this conversation, we get into why imperfect, unpredictable human moments are exactly what AI struggles with most. Why she thinks claiming to be objective is less honest than just telling you where you stand. And how the process of making research accessible to her, as a blind researcher, actually changed what her research found. This one stays with you.

    15 min

  2. APR 28

    261 - Quality at Scale: Josh Miller on What Accessibility Actually Costs

    Josh Miller came to accessibility through telecom, media consulting, and a business school project at MIT. That project ran headfirst into a quote so high it would have eaten up half the program's annual budget. That collision between intention and financial reality is where 3Play Media was born. 19 years later, Josh leads one of the largest media accessibility company in North America, serving over ten thousand customers across education, entertainment, and enterprise. He sits on the CTA's Content and Entertainment Council. He has watched captions go from a niche accommodation to something people without hearing loss prefer. And now, he's watching Audio Description continue on that same journey. In this conversation, Josh talks about what it actually takes to build quality at scale, why not all content is equal (and what that means), and what he believes filmmakers owe a blind audience as storytellers. He also says a sentence that carries a lot: Accessibility is about enabling people to consume content however they want or need to. We unpack what it means in practice.

    25 min

  3. APR 21

    260 - Dr. Cynthia Bennett: Who Gets Left Out When We Build for Access

    Dr. Cynthia Bennett is a blind researcher at Google who studies the AI systems that are supposed to serve blind people. She found out blind people were making Audio Description, and she, a blind person, had no idea. That gap changed how she works. In this conversation, we get into what authentic representation actually requires, why "good enough" accessibility protects the wrong people, and the tool she helped build so blind professionals can finally create AD themselves.

    22 min

  4. APR 14

    Episode 259. The Darkroom Returns: On Credits, Craft, and What Belonging Sounds Like

    Alex Howard and Lee Pugsley are back on The ADNA Presents, and a lot has changed since their first visit. The Darkroom podcast hosts and co-founders of the Blind Film Critic Society join Roy Samuelson for a conversation about what it means when blind critics evaluate Audio Description -- not just as consumers, but as people who can now name the performers, writers, and engineers responsible for the work. They talk about why crediting the full Audio Description team is gaining ground, how the back catalog movement is raising the bar for quality, and what it looks like when the field shifts from technical compliance to genuine artistic contribution. Alex also shares something personal: that bad Audio Description at a movie theater still makes him feel like he doesn't belong. It's a quiet, honest moment that says something important about what's actually at stake. The Blind Film Critic Society is growing. Darkroom is expanding its scope. And the conversation about who gets credited -- and who gets to evaluate that work -- is getting sharper.

    29 min

  5. MAR 31

    The ADNA Presents: Darian Rodriguez Heyman: You Don't Have To Sacrifice To Do The Right Thing

    Darian Rodriguez Heyman has spent thirty years helping mission-led organizations stop reinventing the wheel. He's the author of AI for Nonprofits, founder of Helping People Help, and someone who has thought seriously about why good intentions so often produce predictable, avoidable mistakes. What drew me to this conversation is that the gap he keeps closing, between what's available and what people actually reach for, lives in Audio Description too. We talk about the nonprofit assumption, what AI adoption actually looks like inside organizations right now, and why the accessibility sector may be solving important problems, and why you don't have to live in sacrifice to do the right thing. There's also a moment where he shares something he couldn't find while researching his book. It stuck with me. I think it'll stick with you too.

    31 min

  6. MAR 24

    Blind Film Critics Give the Oscars Their Own Awards

    Lee Pugsley and Alex Howard of The Dark Room watched this year's Oscar ceremony with audio description on, and they brought friends. John Stark, and the newest Blind Film Critic Society member Ren Leach, join them to hand out their own awards, debate the night's surprises and snubs, and reflect on what it actually felt like to experience the telecast as a blind audience member. They get specific. Who got named from the stage, which nominated films still don't have audio description, and what the Marlee Matlin captioning moment means for the conversation ahead. This is a cross-post from The Dark Room, a podcast by two legally blind cinephiles for film lovers of all abilities. Subscribe to their show, and if you want to go deeper on the professionals who make audio description possible, that's what The ADNA Presents is here for.

    36 min

  7. MAR 24

    256: Joanne Levine - At Heart, A Storyteller

    Joanne Levine has spent her career making sure people who aren't physically there, could still experience what happened there. As founding head of programming for Al Jazeera English in the Americas, a producer for Nightline and ABC World News Tonight, and a Senior Advisor for Media at the State Department, she has worked across continents, cultures, and crises. She speaks multiple languages. She has reported from conflict zones and sat with world leaders. In this conversation, we talk about the craft of storytelling across formats, what it costs to translate one world for another, and what a person who has covered everything does, when the most interesting territory left is figuring out what comes next.

    25 min

  8. MAR 17

    Scott McCarthy - VP Localization Dreamworks: We breathe in one language and exhale another.

    What does it take to make a joke land in a language it was never written for? How do you know when the emotional contract with an audience has held, and when has it broken? Scott McCarthy has been sitting with those questions for more than twenty years. As VP of Localization at DreamWorks Animation Television, he oversees dubbing across 30+ markets, from Shrek to preschool series to song-heavy productions, each one requiring a different set of creative partners, a different set of decisions, and a different kind of trust. In this conversation, Scott shares a description of localization work that stopped both of us cold: "We breathe in X language and we exhale Y." From there, we go deep into what trust actually means between a content creator and an audience, why choosing the right studio partners in each market is more important than any single script decision, and why he believes a great dub deserves to be called an original production. We find common ground between localization and audio description: two fields that often get misclassified as translation, when what they actually involve is millions of tiny creative decisions, layered on top of each other, in service of a single goal. The seamlessness is the craft. And we talk about AI honestly, with care for everyone navigating this, including the people under real pressure to move faster than the audience's trust can absorb. This one went somewhere neither of us planned. We are already scheduling part two.

    17 min
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5
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About

The Audio Description Network Alliance presents this interview series with professionals and other experts.

Information

  • Creator
    The ADNA
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    199
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2022
  • Show Website
    The ADNA Presents

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