Have you ever lost something or someone that really mattered to you? It could be a pet, relative, a sentimental object, a job, a partner.
Often, when it first happens, while you can understand it on a logical level, it can take a lot longer for you to fully process it and for the reality to sink in.
It’s almost as though loss doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in a million tiny moments which remind you that something significant has changed.
In my experience, the same can be said for losing your sight.
My sight has been like a people-pleasing visitor who has secretly had enough of my company but is too polite to let me know. Instead, over time, I have felt it slowly fade, as though it has slightly awkwardly been packing a small suitcase for weeks and edging towards the door without telling me.
It’s the moment you trip on a kerb you didn’t know was coming. It’s finding an old, battered book from your English literature class at school and wondering how on Earth you were ever able to read that size print. When you start stroking your friend’s fur coat because you thought it was her pet cat, Tinker, you definitely know you’re in trouble!
It’s you squinting at something that used to be perfectly visible, like a shop sign or a face or a yoghurt lid, as you think: ‘That’s odd. I’m sure that used to be far less mysterious’.
Each time, a strange wave of truth washes over you and you have to hold your breath.
Feelings often follow, flocking in like seagulls around an unattended bag of chips. Most of the time this all happens entirely internally. You don’t perform a big emotional speech. Sometimes you don’t say a word. No, it’s more of a low-level inner grumble. Like when your boiler makes a noise you don’t fully trust.
There’s a reason that people stay silent at these times. They are anticipating the good-natured, well-meaning, friendly quick fixes to a slow-burn, life-changing process.
Bringing accessibility tools into your life
On paper, the solution is obvious and straightforward: do things differently. Use support. Try accessibility tools. Adapt.
The trouble is that on paper, everything is usually black and white. Life, however, is much more like the paint sample station at your local DIY store — complex colours, each with an even more illogical name!
As the colour and the vibrancy in the world starts to fade, as you lose your sight, in your head, it can feel like being asked to suddenly join a new club you never signed up for.
And it’s not even a fun club like ‘People Who Own Ferrets’! It’s not a trendy club, with loud blaring music and questionable dance moves. This is a practical club. A sensible club. The kind of club that probably has laminated guides.
You might start to think, quite reasonably, ‘I don’t want to be different. I was doing fine. I liked doing things the way I was doing them. Why have my eyeballs decided to become experimental all of a sudden?!’
There can also be a strange pride that creeps in at this point. I’m not talking about the good pride — not the “I baked a cake” kind of pride. It’s more like stubborn pride. The sort that makes you hold a menu at arm’s length, as you grin broadly and insist, “No no, I can absolutely read this!” while effectively decoding it like an ancient scroll!
You resist it. You avoid it. The more you feel the other shoe start to drop, the harder you dig in your ankle-breaking heels.
You tell yourself that perhaps things are just ‘a bit blurry today’, as if your vision has moods like a temperamental cat. You pretend you can read the messages in your birthday cards, while secretly having no idea whether it’s one of those super soppy poems or mildly offensive one-liners inside.
You secretly start to consider screen readers, but you don’t know the first thing about tech. You vaguely wonder about Braille — but isn’t that like a whole different language? You need a way in which doesn’t feel overwhelming, like a mountain to climb.
Then comes audio description
Then, one day, you decide to give audio description a go. After all, if you really hate it you can always turn it off again and who’s going to know?
Now, audio description doesn’t arrive with a clipboard or a training manual. It doesn’t say, “right, first you’ll need to learn 17 gestures and recalibrate your entire relationship with technology.”
No, audio description just… talks to you. It’s as easy as that.
You press play, and suddenly there’s a clear, friendly voice filling in the bits your eyes have decided to keep secret. It helps you to understand better and it pulls you into the story, creating a powerful emotional connection that wasn’t there before.
Small but meaningful nuggets of knowledge. “He picks up the letter with trembling hands.” “She stares in shock.” “A very important sandwich sits discreetly on the table.”
Okay, I made that last one up – but you get the picture!
In fact, that’s the point — at long last, you actually get the full picture. You understand just how much you’d been missing. Maybe you wonder why you held back for so long.
For me, this experience also brought with it a huge weight of shame off my shoulders. All the times when I had told myself I was too stupid to understand, not cool enough to get it or that there must be something fundamentally wrong with me were completely reframed in a heartbeat. It had never been me; it had simply always been inaccessible before now.
Nothing about using audio description required me to become a different person. You’re still sitting there, watching your favourite programme, possibly with a cup of tea that’s gone slightly tepid. You haven’t had to learn anything new. You haven’t had to announce anything to the world.
It’s your first taste of what life might be like if you tried doing things in a way that worked better for you. It could be the key to a whole world of new possibilities for you.
It’s as if somebody has tactfully turned on a light you didn’t even realise you needed for so long.
Emotionally, that matters more than you might expect.
What is often overlooked is that the real battle isn’t only about sight. It’s about identity. It’s about not wanting to feel like you’ve crossed some invisible line into ‘a person who constantly needs help’. It doesn’t sound sexy in the slightest.
Audio description doesn’t shove you over that line. It sort of walks alongside you, hands in pockets, whistling cheerily and saying, “we can just do this together, if you like.”
All of this has taught me that while the practicalities of making something accessible are hugely the important, the approach and the way you present it to people is just as crucial. Sighted or not, first impressions matter regardless.
In this way, accessible media does more than simply allowing all people to get the most out of the story you’re telling. It could be a stepping stone to them getting the very most out of their own story, their own life.
I think sometimes, that’s exactly what you need — not a big change, or a total reinvention, but a small, steady step that lets you stay exactly who you are, without the pressure to pretend, perform or pacify others or your own, niggling anxiety.
Of course, this is all particularly true when the programme in question involves a very important sandwich!