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 Turkish mobile operator Turkcell's new app launched with a special
gala screening of Turkish film, 'Kiss of Life', which was released
in October.
Dozens of visually impaired movie-goers were able to experience what
the actors and scenes look like through the app, called 'My Dream
Partner', that provides them with a synchronized audio description
of the film.
"When it comes to go and see a movie, we were going to the cinema
and see the movie but we would miss the visual details of the
movie," said Gamze Sofuoglu, of Turkcell, who is herself visually
impaired. "Those parts would always remain woolly. Sometimes because
of this we were unable to understand the movie, sometimes we would
miss the ending," she added.
"For the first time in the world, with Turkcell's app, those scenes
that used to be missing are being depicted and this app makes those
scenes visible for visually impaired people. Today, I can watch the
movies with the app with audio description and I can have a more
pleasant experience without missing any scenes," she added.
Users simply launch the app before the screening of a film and plug
in their earphones.
Visually impaired movie-goers at the launch were satisfied that the
app had helped them to fully comprehend the movie.
"This was my first experience and there were many visually impaired
users here. We were anxious about whether we would be facing
technical difficulties due to heavy customer traffic but without any
problems we had audio description for every scene and every second.
I listened easily and I enjoyed it very much," said visually
impaired viewer Kerem Altinok.
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Director and lead actor of the movie, Ali Sunal was also excited by
the experience. "I am very happy that 'Kiss of Life' was chosen for
this project. I came here with great excitement. It is an enormous
pleasure to see that the audience can fully understand everything I
wanted to depict. It is great to see all the obstacles are removed,"
he said.
Turkcell's app is a free-of charge service available to all
customers of all operators in Turkey.
The cellphone operator says it expects the app to be used by 800,000
visually impaired citizens in Turkey by 2016.
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