iPhone/iPad VoiceOver: Audio Descriptions in iTunes

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we will be searching iTunes to find movies with audio descriptions. Now if you're not familiar with what it means for a movie to have audio descriptions, well, a movie with audio descriptions describes what is happening on the screen for those of us with a visual impairment.

You know, even though I have some remaining vision, I sometimes miss all the little subtle things in a movie, especially if it's kind of a dark movie. Plus I really like how all the titles and all of the captions are read aloud for us. You know, audio descriptions have become a huge game changer for me. And recently Apple has been adding more and more movies that we're able to purchase or rent in iTunes. So let's go ahead and jump in and check it all out.

Okay, our iTunes app just so happens to be open and we are right here in our search tab. Now our search tab of course, gives us the ability to search the entire iTunes store for media. And then we can purchase and download our media right to our device. Now we have a search field right here across the top edge of our screen. And of course, this is where we will perform our keyword search. So we'll just need to touch in our search field here to get started. So we'll go ahead and just touch here.

VoiceOver: Search search field, double tap to edit.

Douglas: Great, then here we are. You know, we heard VoiceOver announce that we need to double tab to begin editing. So we'll go ahead and just double tap here.

VoiceOver: Search field is editing. Search character mode, insertion point at start.

Douglas: Great, and we have now entered our edit field and we've been given an onscreen keyboard here at the bottom part of our screen. So we are ready to begin our search. Now it will probably come as no surprise that we will use the keywords audio descriptions to search for our audio described movies. I know, who would have thought it right? Anyway, we will just go ahead and type in audio descriptions here and we'll go ahead and just type.

VoiceOver: A-A-U-U-S-D-D-I-I-O-O space, space, audio. D-D-E-E-S-S-X-C-C-R-R-I-I-P-P-T-T-I-I-O-O-N-N, D-S-S, space, space, descriptions.

Douglas: Great, and we have entered of course our key words, so we will find our search button in the bottom right hand corner of our keyboard here. So we'll just go ahead and touch search here.

VoiceOver: Search.

Douglas: And here it is. So we will go ahead and just double tap to perform our search. And we'll just double tap.

VoiceOver: Audio descriptions, search field, double tap to edit great.

Douglas: Great, our search results screen has opened and we've been placed right back in our search edit field. So we can just begin right swiping through our screen to check out all of our search results. Yeah, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe from here.

VoiceOver: selected all button.

Douglas: All right, now we have three buttons just below our search edit field here. And we've been placed right on the first of these buttons, which of course is our all button. Now VoiceOver announced that our all button is currently selected. And this means that all of the products in iTunes that contain the keywords audio descriptions will be listed just below our three buttons here. Now this will include things like, of course, all of our movies, but it will also include things like all of our music podcasts, individual songs, and even our audio books. Yeah, this will be a lot to swipe through, but if we right swipe again, we will find our movies button. And our movies button will really help to narrow down our search results here. So we'll go ahead and just right swipe to it.

VoiceOver: Movies button.

Douglas: Okay, and of course here's our movies button. And if we double tap to select our movies button, we will only be given a list of our movies that contain audio descriptions. And of course, this is exactly what we want. So we'll go ahead and just double tap here.

VoiceOver: Selected movies.

Douglas: Great, our movies button is now selected, and now we are only given a list of audio described movies here. So how about we go ahead and check out our search results and I we'll just right swipe.

VoiceOver: More button.

Douglas: Yeah, here is our more button and this will give us, you know, if we double tap here will give us more types of search results, like audio books and such. But we're looking for movies, so we will go ahead and just right swipe from here.

VoiceOver: The Hunger Games, Mockingjay part one, action and adventure, November 21st, 2014, four and a half stars, 2036 and user reviews.

Douglas: Great, and here is our Hunger Games movie. And, you know, we're given some really great information here. We're told things like our movies intended audience. We're told the movies release date, and we're also given the movie's ratings. Now this movie has pretty good ratings. Yeah, and, you know, we could continue just to right swipe through the rest of our search results here. But you know, I've heard that the Hunger Games movie has really great audio descriptions for us. So how about we go ahead and check this one out. And to do that we'll of course we'll just double tap. So we'll just double tap here.

VoiceOver: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part one image.

Douglas: Okay, our movie's detail screen has opened for us and we've been placed on our movie's banner image at the very top of our detail screen here. Now this is really important. Before we purchase or rent any movie, we're going to want to swipe through our movie's detail screen here, and we'll want to make sure that we find an audio description label. And that way we'll know for sure that our movie here contains audio descriptions. So how about we go ahead and just right swipe to make sure that we find our audio descriptions label here. And so we'll go ahead and right swipe.

VoiceOver: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part one, image.

Douglas: And here's kind of an image of our movie poster here. So we'll just right swipe.

VoiceOver: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part one heading.

Douglas: Cool, and here's the title of our movie. We'll just right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Rating, 13 image, logo, other.

Douglas: And here's our rating, right swipe again.

VoiceOver: $12.99 buy button.

Douglas: This is going to be the cost of it to buy it. We'll right swipe here.

VoiceOver: 69% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Douglas: Yeah, and this is Rotten Tomatoes sort of reviews here, so we'll right swipe through this.

VoiceOver: $3.99 rent button.

Douglas: And we can actually rent it for $3.99. Pretty cool, right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Four and a half stars, 2036 user reviews.

Douglas: Four and a half stars, right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Accessibility tags 4K image, possible text 4K.

Douglas: That's the 4k movie, and that has to do with the quality of the movie here. So the visual quality will just right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Vision, image possible text video.

Douglas: And there's our sound quality. So we'll right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Most image window.

Douglas: And that's some earth sound information, we'll right swipe again.

VoiceOver: Close captioning, image, other, possible text CC.

Douglas: And of course this has closed captioning for people that may have a hearing impairments here. So we'll right swipe again here.

VoiceOver: Audio description, image possible, text AD.

Douglas: Yeah, and that's a lot of swiping there, but this is exactly what we're looking for. Yeah, we're told that this movie for sure has audio descriptions. So we know that we are good to go. And of course, if we wanted to purchase or rent this movie, we would just left swipe back to our purchase or rent buttons here. And of course we would just simply double tap to begin our purchasing process there. And hey, it is as easy as that. Now we'll need to open or go to our TV app to find and watch all of our purchased movies. Yeah, and that's pretty cool.

You know, the fact that we can find and download audio described movies and iTunes, well, really could be dangerous for me because I've already bought a ton of music. And now I see myself purchasing maybe a lot more movies. Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care, and I'll see you next time.