Aug. 16, 2014 — ANN Angelica Dumlao’s dream of enjoying a movie despite being born blind came true on Friday.

Dumlao, a 16-year-old high school student, was one of the hundreds of young people with visual and hearing impairments who were invited to the affair, called “Special Movie Screening for the Blind and Deaf,” at the SM Cinema.

Special screening. Young people with visual or hearing impairment gesture after watching a special movie at the SM North in Quezon City. Lino Santos

Spearheaded by SM Cares, a division of the SM Foundation, through its Program on Disability Affairs and in partnership with SM Cinema, Deaf-Blind Support Philippines, the MTRCB, and the Center for Advocacy, Learning, and Livelihood, the event hosted special screenings of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo at the SM North Edsa, Li of Pi at the SM Baguio, Les Miserables at the SM Davao, and Taken 2 at the SM Iloilo.

The movies featured audio-description and closed captioning to benefit the visually impaired and hard of hearing, a first in the country.

Audio-description provides a narration of key visual elements of the film that blind viewers will ordinarily miss. The narration describe gestures, facial expressions, costumes and scene changes. Inserted between dialogues, they add context to the story without disturbing the original flow of the film. Audio-description enables the visually impaired moviegoer to follow the flow of the movie without guessing or asking somebody else to describe what is on the screen.

Closed captioning lets the hearing impaired person enjoy the movie as it identifies the speaker, describes the sound effects, the music and even the laughter throughout the film.

Bien Mateo, program director for Disability Affairs of SM Cares and SM Supermalls VP for North Luzon, says he was extremely elated by the positive response they received from their partners and the public for this project.

And as a result of the positive feedback SM Megamall received from last year’s special screening, they expanded the activity to other malls to accommodate more people with visual and hearing impairments. They are also planning to make it a quarterly event instead of once a year. 

“The PWD sector has accepted this program very positively. The families of the PWDs who experienced the sensory friendly movies in SM Cinemas are very thankful for the experience that they see their children enjoy the cinemas just like anyone else,” Mateo said.

“It has been part of the corporate social responsibility of SM to make all SM malls a Mall for All, that no one gets left behind—even those members of the family that are physically challenged such as the blind and the deaf.

Movie Television Review and Classification Board Chairman Eugenio Villareal, who was present during the event, called the project “revolutionary” because it was the first time that people with visual and hearing impairments were given a chance to enjoy movies.

“We have to create an environment which is conducive to this type of acceptance and empowerment,” he said.

“The answer is having cinemas that have descriptive audio and closed captioning. This is a day of victory for all of us and we are thankful to the SM group for giving us this chance.”