Mobile app helps visually impaired couple watch ‘Sanju’ in theatre

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 22

Excitement knew no bounds for a visually impaired couple, Dr Prem Sagar and his wife Deepika Sood, as they watched ‘Sanju’, a Bollywoood movie, in a theatre on Saturday and could for the first time enjoy a movie with real-time audio descriptions of the silent or action part of the film.

Deepika works for Saksham, an NGO, that has developed the mobile application, Excel Cinema. Having downloaded the audio description for the movie that got available on Saturday on the web, they just took along their internet-enabled mobile phone sets and headphones to the theatre and had fun.

“We could laugh when the audience was laughing and cry when there were emotional scenes in the film. Otherwise, whenever we used to watch a movie in a theatre, we had to ask people around us as to what happened and why they were reacting so. We used to feel so awkward,” said Deepika.

“We could see 27 such movies, including ‘Black’, ‘Dangal’, ‘PK’ and ‘3 Idiots’, but months later after their release, precisely when the films would be off screens. But being movie buffs, we always felt like watching the movie as soon as it gets released and in a theatre. Though Sanju got released three weeks ago and is still being screened in some theatres, we pressed producers of the film for audio description for the visually impaired earlier, even signing an agreement with him. It was on Saturday that the descriptions got available. Hence, we immediately chose to buy tickets and watch the film in the cinema hall itself for better sound effects and more thrill,” she said.

“Excel Cinema can be downloaded for free from Google Play Store. It has downloadable versions for both android and iPhones,” she said.