TV programs and foreign dubbing. How to please no-one

So, we find a Freeview box which manages to access and output the Audio Described audio track available on British TV. Great.

Then we find it in Aldi for £39 and don't end up paying the Dick Turpin inspired price charged by RNIB (£89). Great.

Then we plug it in and it all works finely and dandily. Great.

And when the audio-d happens it is fun and really, really great. Great.

All great, fab, cool and hip If you don't own a blind wifey or can actually follow any film which runs at anything faster than Brokeback Mountain, you won't realise how non-ironic I'm being here.

So, armed with your electronic joybox, you turn on a program without audio description. Nothing new under the sun there then. Not great, but what we've experienced since the dawn of TV so no reason for boo hoo hooing. There will be more A/D coming along soon if the media slaves remember they are dealing with a "disabled" audience who aren't all planted in wheelchairs or stuck with ear-trumpets. Stick wavers and dog-shaggers exist and are cooking in the unappertising stewpot of "disabled" punters who rather inconveniently won't go off the pub for an uber-bender and just die. Anyway, I ranteth somewhat excessively. (But its my blog so ner ner na-ner ner).

I can only assume them that there is a whole jungle's-worth of happily brainless media-chimps that haven't yet been trained in the "wake up and smell the coffee" philosophy of programme making. (I will do this, by the way, for a small consultancy fee. I like the small of the gravy pouring off this particular traiin).

You watch a programme (in this case "I am the Elephant Man", about a Chinese geezer with elephantistic tendancies, or whatever technical term which accurately describe his mis-shapeness. Large chunks of the program contain dialogue in Chinese, which sort of makes sense as it is the Elephant Man and his family doing much of the talking.

So, how to blindos fare compared to our mutt 'n' "pals" in the disab scene? Badly.

Deaf person switches on subtitles and has everything subtitled. The Chinese translation either comes up as an English voiceover - which is subtitled, OR a load of white subtitltes appearing for the benefit of all viewers who don't understand Cantonese.

Its the OR that matters.

Since there is no audio description for this program, if you press the A/D button on the Freeview remote, without much surprise, nothing happens.

So...what you get, is a program where half the Chinese is translated into English and spoken by a translator. And half the of the Chinese being subtitled (which benefits everyone - except the blind person who doesn't get a translation of any description.

It just so happens, in this case, that the hero of the programme, the Elephant Man himself, becomes silent to a blind person. Because, although a deaf person gets the benefit of added subtitles, plus the added-in subs for the benefit of the great unwashed, a blind person gets nothing but pure Cantonese.

I have two solutions - and for once, coming from me, they aren't even the slightest bit sarcastic.

1. All TV producers and program makers should agree that having three quarters of a program made watchable, or indeed, listenable, means that actually, in reality, the whole of the program becomes pointless. Either translate all of the non-English segments of the programme with an interpreter, or put a full A/D soundtrack on board for so that a blindo can opt into the verbal translation experience.

2. Oh dear, gnashing of chimp teeth. I can hear tthem crying that this would be awfully expensive wouldn't it? Er, nope. You make subtitles already, Mr Programme Maker. So, simply feed the text of this through a half-decent text-to-speech voice, such as Realspeak Sarah, who isn't massively different in sound to Charlotte Green. And off we jolly well go. The audio description track comes for free anyway. Make some use of it then. And stop chucking out programmes that are worse than useless because they are three-quarters baked and therefore promise a gift which doesn't transpire to owt. All or nothing.

Thanks.