Hey Reader,

Ten years ago I found out hundreds of my Audio Description credits had been pulled from a website.

It hurt my business.

So I went to a coffee shop and built my own website.

I'll be honest about the first reason. It was selfish. They were my credits and that's my credibility.

But there was a second reason that's always been on my radar.

When a track got noticed, people asked me why I wrote something a certain way. Or why it didn't travel from cinema to streaming.

Legitimate questions. My name was on the voice, so I was the one associated with the entire Audio Description track.

But I didn't write it. An AD writer did. And someone else checked it, someone mixed it, someone might have directed my performance. They did significant work, and I couldn't point anyone to their names.

Audio Description is built this way so when I do my job well, you hear my voice and forget both me, and that someone else wrote every word of it.

So the website became about them too.

Then came the tedious part, for ten years. Someone emailed me their credits. I copied and pasted the text into a WordPress blog post and hit submit, or found someone to do it for me.

Incredibly tedious.

And I kept repeating some very human errors along the way.

I also kept a wish list the whole time. Those titles that audiences wanted to have Audio Description. Hundreds of titles have been removed from there. Lots to celebrate there.

I rebuilt the site from scratch, and a lot of that list is live now.

A few things worth knowing, even if you never open the site:

If you've worked on a track, you can paste your whole credit list into a form as text or an attachment. No account. You get a receipt right away, and an email when it goes live.

If you know someone whose work deserves a line (a writer, a QC person, an engineer), you can send their credits for them. Your name stays private.

If you're looking for which shows have Audio Description, the Audio Description Project at adp.acb.org does that really well. TheADNA.org is for who made them.

I'll keep doing this. I've been doing it for ten years.

So now it's your turn. Sniff around. See what you think, see what's coming up, see what you want it to be. Then hit reply and tell me. Any and all feedback welcomed and encouraged.

For the record, the coffee shop was in a mountain town I lived in for a few years. I was recently on a client call where, through several coincidences and brief questions, it turns out she owns the house LITERALLY NEXT DOOR TO WHERE I LIVED, and moved in a few months after I moved out. Wild.

P.S. The full before-and-after, with every new feature, is on the blog: The Names Behind The Track.