Dr. Cynthia Bennett Part 2: What We Lose When We Stop Describing Things to Each Other
The ADNA Presents
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...
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261 - Quality at Scale: Josh Miller on What Accessibility Actually Costs
The ADNA Presents
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...
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260 - Dr. Cynthia Bennett: Who Gets Left Out When We Build for Access
The ADNA Presents
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.
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Episode 259. The Darkroom Returns: On Credits, Craft, and What Belonging Sounds Like
The ADNA Presents
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...
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The ADNA Presents: Darian Rodriguez Heyman: You Don’t Have To Sacrifice To Do The Right Thing
The ADNA Presents
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...
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Blind Film Critics Give the Oscars Their Own Awards
The ADNA Presents
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...
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256: Joanne Levine - At Heart, A Storyteller
The ADNA Presents
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...
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Scott McCarthy - VP Localization Dreamworks: We breathe in one language and exhale another.
The ADNA Presents
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...
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J. Michael Collins
The ADNA Presents
J. Michael Collins has 30 years in voiceover, 50+ industry awards, and runs the largest voiceover conference in the world. He also still has things worth saying. In this conversation, J. Michael and Roy talk about why the voiceover industry is unusually decent, what abundance actually means in a business full of competition, and how Audio Description continues to earn its place at the table at VO Atlanta. J. Michael is candid about the cost of people-pleasing, the math of saying no, and what it looks like to take real risks in a career that spans agency work, online casting, and everything...
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Maren Garcia
The ADNA Presents
Voice actor Maren Garcia joins host Roy Samuelson to talk about how she first discovered Audio Description, and why it immediately felt personal. Maren shares the moment she was hired for a full feature film, after being found through the Disabled Voice Actors Directory, a resource built to support authentic casting. She talks candidly about vetting an unfamiliar company before saying yes, then falling in love with audio description as both craft and service. They dig into what makes audio description work when it is done well: intention, empathy, and choices that support...
info_outlineVoice actor Maren Garcia joins host Roy Samuelson to talk about how she first discovered Audio Description, and why it immediately felt personal.
Maren shares the moment she was hired for a full feature film, after being found through the Disabled Voice Actors Directory, a resource built to support authentic casting.
She talks candidly about vetting an unfamiliar company before saying yes, then falling in love with audio description as both craft and service.
They dig into what makes audio description work when it is done well: intention, empathy, and choices that support the story. Audio description is the narration track that communicates essential visual information that the audio alone cannot carry. Maren also describes an experiment watching a dance show with audio description, just to feel how writers and performers decide what matters when everything is visual.
Then the conversation pivots to NPC Chronicles, a Kickstarter soundboard project for Dungeons & Dragons non-playable characters, and why Maren sees it as an access and connection tool, inspired by assistive communication devices and her experience working with kids with disabilities. A soundboard is essentially an on-demand toolbox of sounds you can trigger in real time.
Follow Maren at @MarenGarciaVO.