Disney App Narrates 'Finding Dory' For Visually Impaired Fans

Finding Dory arrived in theaters today, and thanks to the Disney Movies Anywhere app, visually impaired and blind movie goers will be able to enjoy the movie with audio narration. The app works by using a phone's microphone to listen to the movie; when the dialog in the movie stops, the app will describe what is happening on-screen directly to the user via a pair of headphones.

The functionality is made possible with smart-syncing audio descriptive narration technology, which is fairly straight forward. A blind or visually impaired movie goer will be able to listen to the movie's dialog, of course, and hear whatever sound effects are present. The Disney Movies Anywhere app will fill in the gaps between the dialog with synced descriptions based on what just took place.

The Disney Movies Anywhere app has already offered movie audio descriptions for some of the company's films, but this appears to be the first instance in which Disney has made the audio description available for a movie that is the theaters rather than one released for home viewing.

Audio descriptions are becoming increasingly available thanks to modern technology; Netflix has vowed to expand the number of audio descriptions it offers for shows, for example, and other companies have done similar. The Disney Movies Anywhere app is available for iOS through the iTunes store.

SOURCE: E! Online