People experience a barrier-free film made for visually impaired audiences in a cinema in Beijing. Photo: Courtesy of Wu Qian

A report highlighting China's continuous efforts in recent years to secure cultural access for individuals with visual impairments was released on Tuesday, International Day of Persons with Disabilities.   

The report, titled China's Efforts to Safeguard Cultural Rights for the Visually Impaired: Insights from the Cinema of Light Public Welfare Initiative, was released in Chinese and English by the China Foundation for Human Rights Development and the National High-level Think Tank. 

The report analyzed one of the most successful examples, the Guangming Cinema (Cinema of Light). The volunteer project was initiated by faculty and students at the Communication University of China (CUC) in 2017 to produce voice descriptions of films.

"The demand for accessible movies by people living with disabilities is increasing day by day," Fu Haizheng, a founding member of the Cinema of Light project and executive director of the Institute for Accessible Media Communication at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

He explained that the journey from trial and error to a standardized production model has been one of growth and transformation. 

"The team has adopted a standardized production process, with specific steps including film selection, scriptwriting, review, proofreading, and recording," says Zhao Xijing, a faculty volunteer on the project team. 

"Accessible movies" are different from ordinary audio clips. They mainly break down the scenes of the movie and use language specially geared toward visually impaired audiences to facilitate better understanding of the action, visuals, and emotional elements portrayed on screen, helping them appreciate the movie. Transforming a movie into an "accessible version" requires multiple steps and different forms of cooperation, but the Guangming Cinema is on its way to perfecting the process.

Over the past seven years, the project has produced more than 600 audio descriptions for films, according to the report. The productions were selected from a wide range of film genres to meet the diverse needs of audiences of all ages, and feature the use of vivid descriptive language.

Cinema of Light productions are available in over 2,000 schools for the visually impaired nationwide and other specialized venues across the country, according to the report. They are also freely accessible on cable TV platforms.

As part of efforts to enrich accessible cultural products for people with visual impairments, China has published over 500 new Braille books annually since 2021. Public libraries across the country provide approximately 35,200 reading room seats for visually impaired readers and have 146.6 million Braille books, according to the report. 

The China Braille Press has developed 870 fully copyrighted barrier-free films, accessible to audiences with hearing or visual impairments. The China Braille Library screens one film every week with live narration by staff, with more than 300 voice description scripts on hand, the report added.    

China has more than 17 million individuals with visual impairments, one of the largest visually impaired populations in the world. 

With the country's rapid development, their spiritual and cultural needs are increasingly valued by society. More and more accessible facilities like barrier-free cinemas, streaming apps, and bookstores are building bridges for them to share in the cultural heritage of the country thanks to official efforts and social groups as well. Various Chinese streaming sites such as Youku have set up special channels with tailored content to make sure they can enjoy equal access to cultural products.  

According to the site, as of September, the theater had more than 8,000 accessible audiovisual works as it has also worked to create accessible works for four TV episodes per week, two new popular movies per month and regular batches of classic movies.

"And our next goal is for these audio descriptions of films to be available at the same time as their main cinema release, so that people with visual impairments can walk into the cinema with their family and friends to cry and laugh together, and even more importantly, 'enter society' by freely participating in its social and cultural life," Fu noted.

Challenges remain, however, as few production companies are willing to take part in producing barrier-free versions due to copyright concerns, the long production process, and high narrative standards involved in production. 

With the fast development of China's high technology, AI and other key technologies have been introduced to raise accuracy and efficiency.