Emirates Introduces In-flight Entertainment For Visually Impaired

Emirates has introduced an audio description on movies for visually impaired passengers on its in-flight entertainment system, ICE Digital Widescreen. Audio description, increasingly common in cinemas and TV, is a recorded narration explaining the scene during the gaps in dialogue, while the film soundtrack continues at its normal pace. A release, signed by Mr Patrick Brannelly, Emirates Vice President, Corporate Communications, said Emirates� ICE (information, communication and entertainment) was recently awarded the �World's Best Airline In-flight Entertainment� at the SKYTRAX World Airline Awards for the 10th consecutive year, and now offers audio description soundtracks on 16 Walt Disney Studio Motion picture films including Frozen, Saving Mr Banks, Cars 2, Monsters University, Marvel�s The Avengers, Toy Story 3 and all four pirates of the Caribbean movies. In 2007, it said Emirates also worked with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures to introduce closed captions, the technology used by the hard of hearing, for the first time in in-flight entertainment. �As well as showing the actors' dialogues in subtitles, closed captions also include references to sound effects used in the movie,� the release added. It said the August ice digital widescreen would offer over 50 movies with closed captions. The release said: �Our focus is not just the depth and diversity of our on-board entertainment, but also relevance. Making entertainment accessible to our diverse customers is very important to us. It was our motivation to introduce movies that could be enjoyed by customers with visual difficulties. Our greatest satisfaction comes from delivering an exceptional customer experience, which we hope our constant innovation fulfils. In future, we want to add more content with Audio Description, so visually impaired passengers can be entertained with an even wider choice of content when flying with us.�