Mobile app enhances cinema experience for the vision impaired

A mobile app provides narrative through the user’s earphones, using Audible Magic’s audio fingerprinting technology for frame-accurate synchronization with the movie soundtrack.

Lisa Wacklin, project manager for Available Cinema at the Swedish Film Institute says, “It’s a huge change. In the past, audio descriptions were performed live and limited to about 150 movie screenings per year. Now they will be available for more than 150,000 screenings every year in Sweden.”

Cybercom created the Disabilities Platform, consisting of a software development kit, which can be easily incorporated within a mobile app, and separate tools to enable movie post-producers to package ‘fingerprints’ of the movie soundtrack with audio descriptions for app users to download from Sweden’s Cinema Guide server. The Swedish Film Institute intends to make the Disabilities Platform available internationally to movie distributors, broadcasters and organisations representing the vision and reading impaired.

“Working with Cybercom on this project has been truly rewarding,” said Mike Edwards, General Manager EMEA for Audible Magic. “Witnessing the delight of users at the launch is an experience I will not forget.”

“It is a very successful project with great cooperation between our companies,” said Cybercom project manager Magnus Månsson.

These new features will be showcased in the new Disney film, Finding Dory.