I found a new fun documentary after a week or so of taking a break from watching any and reality shows. The only thing that surprises me is how short it is. Only three episodes. I thought it would be as long as How to Build a Sex Room.

In any case, while my audio description critique will be very similar, there’s something I’m curious about. For those unaware, audio description is a separate track added to visual media that describes visual aspects. It’s mainly intended for blind and visually impaired audiences, but can be used by and benefit anyone.

Documentary Premise

This documentary series talks about women’s sexuality and the ways they can find pleasure.

Documentary Information

Genre: Documentary
Category: Adult
Explicit violence: No
Explicit sex: No
Content warnings I noticed: Discussion of sexual assault

Review

The writing is similar to many Netflix documentaries. It’s good. The language fits the adult audience targeted. The word choice is also not confusing.

The descriptions are delivered in a minimal style. The biggest advantage of this style is that it doesn’t overwhelm viewers. The biggest disadvantage, however, is that it lacks in detail. There’s little to no focus on physical descriptions and other interesting visual details. The only physical feature I saw described is someone’s curly hair.

Due to the subject of this documentary, there are points where diagrams are presented. Said diagrams are not described. In my opinion, there are two reasons not to describe them. To me, both make sense. I don’t think these are good enough reasons, but they make sense.

The first reason is that there’s no space to add in a description. Throughout these episodes, there’s a lot of information and commentary. I can see the lack of space being a problem when it comes to describing diagrams. Combine that with not wanting to exhaust the viewer and you have a great excuse to leave these descriptions out.

The audio description guidelines can be a bit strict. It doesn’t allow space for creativity or choice. Descriptions need to fit in spaces where dialogue and commentary won’t be interrupted. I agree with this general guideline, but the problem is that there’s usually only one choice for audio description. It’s this one. The very generic, not creative one.

Audio description is an art. I can attest to the fact that it has helped me in my creative writing. It’s been very useful as a style guide for descriptions. Because audio description is written like a screenplay, it’s easy to follow and understand.

Like all art, audio description has a general audience. The type of audio description, however, has their niche audience as well. Some people may like very detailed descriptions while others find it to be too exhausting. Others, like me, might want a balance. Enough detail to satisfy and be interesting, but not so much that it’s exhausting.

This is where choice comes in. Netflix could have added an extended audio description. This extended version could have, at the very least, a few extra seconds of description. In this version, some basic details of the diagrams could be described, such as the images, what type of diagram, and give us any text that might be written on it. Yes, the people being interviewed discuss the diagrams, but I still don’t feel like I have a full picture.

The second reason is that they can be hard to describe. There’s a possibility that a totally blind audience may not fully grasp a full visual description of charts, diagrams, and graphs. I personally have a hard time grasping these things. Even if I was given a Braille version, I would still have a hard time deciphering it.

For this, the only solution is to make the description as basic as possible. Focus on images, text, type of diagram, and the way things are set up. For example, if a diagram has images left to right with text under each one, describe it something along the lines of, “The diagram has four images with text underneath each.” After that, tell the viewer what each image is and deliver any important information the text gives us. Also, make sure to state that the images are located left to right.

This can be done. However, for both options, an extended audio description would be required. Again, space does not allow for this kind of detailed description. If Netflix were to provide an extended audio description, they would be able to add this amount of detail and reach an audience who would appreciate it.

The describer’s performance is great. Because this is a documentary, their neutral tone is perfect. The describer is the same person who narrates The Mole. If you’re interested, here’s my critique of the reality show’s audio description.

Audio Description of The Mole

For the most part, the audio description is edited well. It doesn’t interrupt any commentary and allows viewers to appreciate silence and music. However, the audio describer is cut off at some point during the ending credits of episode three. Netflix, unfortunately, does this a lot. It’s really annoying because you don’t get to see a full list of those who worked on the documentary series. I could always look for the documentary series on audiovault.net where the ending credits will most likely not be cut off, but I shouldn’t have to.

Currently, Netflix only offers this series audio described in English. The series is, of course, offered in several other languages. Netflix is once again excluding viewers that don’t speak English.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s an okay audio description. There’s a lot of room for improvement. I rate it two stars. Let me know what you think in the comments.