"The biggest difficulty in making this version is technical. A four minute long performance can fit only 240 words at most, but it's so little information compared what you can see at one glance. The person writing the descriptions has to have a good command of both performance arts and the language comprehensible to the visually impaired," Chao said.
Despite the difficulty, made worse by small size of her production team of untrained graduate students, Chao insisted on doing the dance film because the visually impaired need it. "When visually impaired people hear their sighted friends talking about the latest show, they want to know about it too so they have topics in common with other people. We chose Magic of the Dance also because the show is very popular both here and in Europe. They can talk about the show with many people," Chao said.
After the film finishes touring eight locations across Taiwan, it will become part of the collection of the Council for Cultural Affairs, which funded the project. Audio described versions of films in local libraries, however (as in the US), is nowhere near realization due to a lack of legislation regarding copyright. Copyright issues also limit the film's screenings to schools instead of theaters.
"There's a long way to go before these films become widely available. The government policies for the visually impaired at present still focus on improving their livelihood with vocational training. But a blind person's life can be more sorrowful than healthy people. Participating in cultural activities can do them good. It may also bring out their artistic talents, which then give them wider career options," Chao said.
Magic of the Dance is also the first audio described version of a foreign-language film. The need for well-known Hollywood movies, as Chan concedes, is more urgent than dance shows because it makes the visually impaired part of pop culture.
"I love foreign movies, but I have to have two friends with me in the theater. One to interpret the English dialogue and the other to describe movements," Chan said, laughing about the trouble it caused his friends.
Chao admitted that audio description was costly and involved a lot of time and personnel."It would be possible [to do more] if we had more support, particularly from the private sector, to set up systematic training programs for audio-description professionals. But this deficiency of such professionals is a world-wide problem," Chao said.
"The sighted often underestimate the blind's longing for the visual world. They are actually very curious about sights, about movies and fine arts. They can enjoy these things equally if we construct their visual world for them through language, which we all have in common," Chao concluded.
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