Squid Game and Audio Description: A Case Study on International Access
When Squid Game, a South Korean survival drama, first dropped on Netflix in mid-September, it took the world by storm. Within mere weeks of its launch, it amassed over 1.65 billion viewing hours, was viewed by over 142 million households, and became the top-viewed program on the streaming service (Deadline). Squid Game’s immediate popularity spawned a plethora of internet memes, sketch comedies, and never-ending speculation about its cliffhanger ending. It quickly established itself as an international cultural phenomenon, gripping the world with its equally thrilling and terrifying concept and visceral social commentary.
Despite the growing worldwide popularity of South Korean media, Squid Game’s massive global virality was still rather unprecedented for a show that had received minimal marketing outside of South Korea (IndieWire). The program was initially released with only a handful of audio and subtitle selections. Subtitle options included English [CC], English, Korean [CC], Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. In fact, discrepancies in translation quality between the English closed captioning and English subtitle offerings were criticized, then clarified, on TikTok. Audiences also had a selection of six initial audio tracks, which were Korean [Original], English, German, Spanish, French, and Korean Audio Description (Decider).
It wasn’t long before international audiences noticed the lack of audio description in their native language. Many English-speaking Twitter users expressed their disappointment that a show as popular as Squid Game was inaccessible.
As soon as this problem was raised, the talented audio description community began work on an exceptional AD track for Squid Game. Audio description experts Eric Wickstrom (@IDC_Eric), Sri Gordon (@gordon_sri), Liz Gutman (@Liz_IDC), and Antonio Torres, first announced the release of the English audio description track on November 9, 2021, over seven weeks after Squid Game’s premiere. The blind and low vision community on Twitter expressed their appreciation for IDC’s hard work on their immersive and engaging audio description, citing this as an important step towards providing more AD for international content.
However, the widespread problem of a lack of AD in multiple languages persists on Netflix and other streaming platforms. Not having access to a TV show or movie goes beyond not being able to engage with it — it also means that these audiences are excluded from discourse, cultural movements, and even memes. This proves to be especially challenging for unexpected global hits such as Squid Game, but remains an issue for less popular content as well. While offering artistic AD for entertainment is critical to providing true access for blind and low vision audiences, how can streaming services ensure that these viewers can engage with all content in all languages from the very beginning?
Providing widespread audio description begins with semi-automated AD. With VerbalEyes, any existing audio description scripts can be automatically translated into another language, read via text-to-speech technology (TTS), and scheduled to fit into the dubbing track’s audio gaps. Although TTS audio description is often criticized for sounding cheap, it can be an effective stand-in for professionally created audio description, especially on shows that may never have audio description in a viewer’s native language otherwise. By automating this process, it becomes possible for audiences to have access to audio description in any language they are most comfortable in.
Even though Squid Game now has English audio description, there are still thousands of shows that remain inaccessible to blind and low vision audiences across the world. This can take the form of the English-language hit show Bridgerton not having a French audio description track, or the Korean-language show Start-Up not having any AD at all. We are hopeful that the Squid Game phenomenon marks a turning point in the creation of audio description for streaming content on an international scale. You never know — maybe this is the green-light that we have been waiting for.
