On August 11, 2021, a group of audio describers from the Eurasian Subtitlers's League made the first ever Russian audio description of a silent film. It was George Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon" (1902).
The choice of the film is not accidental. Georges Méliès was not only a well-known screenwriter, director and actor. He came up with the idea of providing silent films with a short commentary describing what was happening on the screen.
An international team wrote an audio description script in about a month. Pavel Obiukh from the Russian Society of the Blind and Margarita Melnikova (from the project "Describe it to me") were invited as experts. The audio description was voiced by Radik Mukhametzyanov.
As a result of their work, the team prepared guidelines "Audio description of Silent Films". It is in print now and will soon be available to readers. The guidelines are being translated into English, Latvian and Kazakh; it will also be printed in Braille. In addition, it is planned to translate the guidelines into German, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese.
The audio described version of the film is available on YouTube and Rutube:
https://youtu.be/ZWJY9jRer3I
https://rutube.ru/video/761cf5ea1b9fcd59ab571c7f7c823502/
A copy of the audio described film, along with the text printed in Braille, will be sent to Russian libraries for the blind and visually impaired.