If you’ve been reading these for a while now, what I’m about to say will not shock you that much. But, I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled list of shows for a much more important discussion. Quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.

Just the other day, I noticed the nominations had been announced for the People’s Choice Award for the Audio Description Project/American Council Of THe Blind’s annual awards gala. This isn’t about whether or not the correct five, or whether or not my votes got in, but it is very much about one show, which I went into pretty heavily week after week and called it out for being incredibly deficient.

I am appalled by the nomination for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and this is why people’s choice awards don’t work. I think people voted who had seen little to no television, but if the only show you watched last year was this show, please just don’t vote. I don’t hold the organization responsible, I’m holding voters accountable.

I’m here, and other places, trying to advocate for the best written, narrated, and produced audio description track, and that isn’t it. by miles, the audio description track of Percy Jackson isn’t qualified to be near that list. I would actually consider it for the worst list, if that existed.

I’m not even sure the blame lies fully with the company who made the audio description, so much as it does with Disney, which now believes they’ve earned some credibility in their audio description. that is where I have the problem, and why I’m not just a little upset, but I’m viscerally angry. To me, nominating this track would be the same as nominating Text-To-Speech, or just a show that didn’t even have audio description. I’m actually asking myself, why do i do what I do if people are going to vote for this?

You got only one vote. One. One title to put in that block, and from the hundreds of shows that aired with audio description last year, you had to type in the title of a show that had an intentionally diverse cast, and had none of that represented in the audio description. I say “intentionally”, because there was a movie, and a book, and the casting choices here aren’t just carbon copied from previous adaptations. The casting here wanted to show kids of all races that they could be demigods, and other mythological figures. Zeus could be black. They made sure that for a visual audience, for sighted kids, that everyone felt seen, heard, and represented, and we got none of that.

Maybe you just don’t know what audio description is supposed to do, but it bridges the gap to give us as close of an experience as possible to what a sighted audience has. It does not choose for us what information is pertinent, and it definitely should not be filtering out race and ethnicities. I’ve seen conversations, and spoken with people of color who lament their representation in audio description, and all I hear is that they either are not mentioned, like in Percy Jackson, or they are only mentioned as unicorns is scripts that default by not describing white characters, but only describing POC when on screen. The best audio description tracks are the ones with the most detail, that bring us into the film, and make it so that if we have those conversations with our friends and families about our favorite shows, we don’t have to feel like we missed a lot, and they are filling in the gaps. Having to ask our sighted friends “was there anyone in that cast who looks like me” should not be something necessary, and this track supports that segregation between the sighted and blind and visually impaired.

So I quite literally don’t know what I’m doing, if a bunch of people are going to get together and vote for a show that accents no representation, and thus sends a message to Hollywood that *this* is what we are looking for. i think it sets a dangerous precedent for future tracks coming out of Disney, I think it kneecaps those who are advocating for better audio description, and i would love to rescind that nomination. That last part, I don’t expect, but if it was my site, and I had asked my readers, and you voted for that, i would cancel my awards, because I woke up this morning, ready to review and talk about audio description, but now I really quite frankly don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here anymore.

If you want shitty audio description, why do you need advocates at all? That level of audio description will happen on its own, so why would anyone bother to push forward accessibility? Some will be happy that Celebrity Family Feud or some other game show didn’t get a slot this year, and truthfully, that show likely has the same level of audio description as Percy Jackson. A show like that isn’t going to describe each contestant, and will give us pertinent information for us to have basic knowledge in the plot structure… as will text-to-speech. Technically, Yes, adding audio description to Percy Jackson, or Wheel Of Fortune, or The Tonight Show, or whatever would all give us more than whaat we get, but this isn’t about simply having existing audio description, because that wasn’t the question. The question was what show was the best audio described program? And you just sent a message to Hollywood that this level is considered excellence.

I’m likely preaching to the choir, because I don’t know why anyone would come here to read my thoughts on the quality of audio description, sit through my weekly diaries where I’m pointing out all the faults of Percy Jackson and then go vote for it. But if you did, I’m not just asking, i demand to know what your reason is. I demand to know what you consider to be the best audio description in television of the year, because I can’t do this shit anymore if a faction of the blind community is just going to turn right around to Disney and companies like that and thank them for the bare minimum by calling it “excellence in audio description”.

I’m ashamed. Angry. Appalled. Confused. Discouraged. I honestly do not know how to write my next column or review, or if I even want to right now. I’m hoping, and assuming it will pass, but until then, I’m suspending the Small Screen Diaries, because they apparently aren’t working. Consider this on hiatus.

There’s also a stage musical for The Lightning Thief, which is the book the first movie and first season of the show is adapted from, and their finale song is a chorus chant of “Bring on the monsters, bring on the real world.” You shouldn’t have to feel like you need to take on a monster to take on the real world. Life is not supposed to be that difficult, and we certainly need to do more reflection on the kind of real world we want to live in, and why anyone should equate fighting literal monsters to surviving each day.