Bringing Audio Description/Narration to Bengali Cinema: Pather Panchali and Jamai-Babu in Focus

• Arya Moitra

  Jadavpur University

  Author

• Dr. Ishan Chakraborty

  Jadavpur University

  Author

Audio description, along with other forms of assistive technology that can foster an environment for inclusive entertainment, remains largely unimplemented for making audiovisual content accessible in many commonly spoken languages, including Bengali. In this paper, we present two pioneering initiatives that aim to at least partially mitigate this lack by providing audio-described films to the Bengali-speaking visually disabled audience. Additionally, this paper explores the process of creating such accessible content with critical awareness and examines practical concerns related to making the final products widely available to the public on the internet.

1. Arya Moitra, Jadavpur University

   Arya Moitra (he/him) is a Project Fellow for the Shabdakalpa project at the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR), Jadavpur University. He completed his MA in English at Jadavpur University in 2025. His primary areas of interest include digital humanities and disability studies. He produced the first-ever Bengali audio description track for a film, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955), under the supervision of Dr. Ishan Chakraborty, for the Disability in Indian Literature course. He created the LexiCongreve project for the Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics course offered by SCTR. He is also connected to the Shakespeare in Bengal project. While not studying or working, he can usually be found playing video games or memorising the discographies of his favourite bands.

2. Dr. Ishan Chakraborty, Jadavpur University

   Dr. Ishan Chakraborty is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. An awardee of the West Bengal Govt.’s Abul Kashem Rahimuddin Samman in 2019, he has also received the State Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities 2019.  His areas of interest include Rabindranath Tagore, Translation Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Body Politics, Language Justice and Nineteenth Century Bengali and English Literature. He was Principal Investigator of the “Audio Book Project” sponsored by the Centre for Disability Studies and Rehabilitation, Jadavpur University and a co-coordinator of the RUSA 2.0 project “Bodies of Difference: Pedagogies of the Marginal in the Global South.” Currently, he is acting as consultant for the Language Justice project, “Accessibility/Languages/Tech,” sponsored by Whose Knowledge?, UK. In addition, he is leading the “Crip Lit Cards” project funded by the Global Jadavpur University Alumni Foundation.

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