Barrier Free Movies: New Service for Blind Viewers in Japan (April.2002)

Every movie fan wants to see a hit film soon after its released at a movie theater where we can enjoy excellent sound quality and the big screen. Although we can easily watch most movies now at home on video, we cannot experience the overwhelming power of movies unless we actually make the effort and go to a movie theater.

These days in Japan more and more movie theaters are equipped with entrances with slopes and special toilets for people using wheelchairs. One theater, which is a two-story building, has an elevator so that people in wheelchairs can move easily between the floors. However, there are still only a few theaters which have a special watching space for people in wheelchairs. In one of the movie theaters in Kyoto, there is a special space for people in wheelchairs surrounded by iron bars. Shin Hashiguchi, who loves movies and often goes to theaters in a wheelchair, says, "My wife and I enjoy watching a movie in the same theater, but we feel separated by the iron bars. When we watch a movie together, we expect to share our feelings. For example we get surprised at the same scene or we cry together. We can also enjoy eating popcorn in one big container together, which is one of the ways to enjoy movies. However when we are separated like this, we cannot enjoy watching a movie in the true sense." It is very important to equip theaters with barrier free facilities for people with disabilities. However, what is more important is to provide the environment where they can enjoy themselves just like people without disabilities naturally do.

There may not be so many blind people that go to movie theaters. This fact does not mean that the blind do not want to enjoy movies, but rather it means that even if they are interested in movies, in reality, as they have to rely only on the dialogue they hear, they have difficulty in understanding what is going on in each scene, which they can only imagine from the soundtrack. The situation is worse in case of foreign movies. In some previews, assisting audio guidance is given to make the movie barrier free, but actually such cases are still very rare, because of the technical problems to produce a movie with special explanation for the blind. Usually, we only need a film to show a movie with subtitles, but to add explanation of the scenes, we have to do the recording all over again, which is very expensive.

In order to improve this situation, City Lights, an organization promoting barrier free movies, is providing unique services for blind people so that they can enjoy watching movies even more. City Lights believes that "Images, or 'seeing', is not everything in movies" and that there is something more wonderful and interesting in movies than what we just see with our eyes. Chihoko Inaba, representative of City Lights, says that when she was feeling depressed, she used to watch movies and was given hope again. In a movie theater, there is a peculiar atmosphere where everyone shares something great that moves our hearts, but at the same time each person has his own feelings and is absorbed in the ending theme in his own way. Inaba wants blind people to experience the same at theaters and by using unique ways City Lights has realized the barrier free movies.

One of the ways is for volunteers from City Lights to accompany blind people to the movie theater. The volunteer studies beforehand and explains the key words, characters, and the background of the movie, and when the movie starts, adds explanation in the scenes where there is no dialogue. Volunteers from City Lights accompanied 15 blind people to "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" ("Spirited Away"), which was a record-breaking hit film in the summer of 2001. The blind people who went to the movie were delighted with this service and asked for the same service to be provided every month. Therefore City Lights also held meetings to show "Onmyoji" ("Exorcists in the Heian Era") and "Harry Potter"(dubbed in Japanese). At first as volunteers did not prepare at all, they could not even tell the names of the characters while watching movies. They realized that they must study beforehand and need to provide more detailed explanation in the scenes that are difficult to understand and decided to make a simple guidebook. Their ideal scenario is basically to provide one volunteer to look after each blind person, but now in fact, one volunteer is taking care of several blind people at one time.

Unfortunately, at present only Japanese movies or foreign movies dubbed in Japanese can be seen. As for the old films, when they are showing after half a year or so from the release at a small theater, they can be seen with the recorded explanation prepared beforehand by using MD. City Lights has actually succeeded to show "Dancer in the Dark" in this way. However, preparation is very hard and also when seeing the movie, since a volunteer must adjust the time lag of the film and the explanation, one-to-one support is necessary, which is not so easy.

In the research work for the audio guidance system, City Lights works closely with blind people to make natural sounding and easy- to- understand audio guidance. The blind actually monitor the guidance and think and choose preferable words and phrases. City Lights aims to produce audio guidance that is not too interfering, but easy to understand and explaining without breaking the atmosphere of the movie. The guidance should provide the full enough explanation to help the listener imagine the situation and still strictly follow the original movie."

City Lights also supports blind people to enjoy watching videos at home and provides them with additional information, so that they will be more interested in the movies. In addition, City Lights works with related organizations that hold movie shows, previews and film festivals to further promote barrier free movies.

In "Gone with the Wind", one of the movies shown at the Chofu Film Festival, 6 people who are completely blind actually participated in narrating the subtitles. Megumi Mizuki, who played Scarlett, said, "It was hard to play Scarlett, but I did my best not to ruin the attractive image of Vivien." Michiko Nagasawa, who played Melanie, said, "I already knew and have often had a chance to enjoy the story, but through the recording I found many interesting scenes or important parts that I had not been aware of before, and now I think the story is much more appealing." Thus both voice actresses enjoyed the recording very much.

According to Nagasawa, she realized that even blind people can enjoy movies if there was an appropriate explanation or recording of subtitles. Mizuki also hopes that in the future a blind person will be able to listen to a brief audio guidance and narration of subtitles through a single earphone, when seeing any movie at any theater.

Inaba has a dream to create a barrier free movie theater in the future. However, her goal for the moment is to establish City Lights as an NGO. She says, "We do not think that our work should be carried out by volunteers forever. We would like to make the work to produce assisting audio guidance more professional, since it is a characteristic of the social welfare services environment in Japan that first we have to establish the services for the disabled as a business, in order to provide improved support."