As you settle in to watch the 91st Academy Awards this Sunday night, keep an eye out for the work of our very own Media Access Group (MAG). MAG captioned and/or described 11 of this year's Oscar-nominated films, making them accessible to the 37 million Americans who are hearing-impaired. While the captions are critical for the hearing-impaired community, they can also be used by viewers watching these films in noisy public spaces, including bars, airports and gyms. Descriptive services provide descriptive narration of key visual elements throughout the film, which is then inserted within the natural pauses in the dialogue to help low-vision viewers to better understand the story.
Captioning films for the Oscars is one of many large national projects that the MAG team works on every year out of their offices in Boston and Los Angeles. Most recently, MAG worked as part of a team of specialists from other networks to caption Super Bowl LIII, reaching almost 100 million people worldwide.
Congrats to all of this year's Oscar-nominated films, and a special hats-off to MAG for the critical role they play in making movies accessible to all.
