It used to be that one name on an Audio Description track gets the credit, and the questions, for a whole team’s work. theADNA.org puts the rest of the names on the record.
Update, October 5, 2026: The Audio Description Project at the American Council of the Blind announced the directory: https://adp.acb.org/announcing-database-ad-credits
About ten years ago, I found out that 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 site.
At the time, a few sites listed which shows had Audio Description. Some named the company that made it. The ones I found didn’t name the people.
One Voice, A Whole Team
When a track got noticed, people asked me why I wrote a line a certain way. They asked why a track changed between the theater and streaming.
Fair questions. My voice was the one they heard, so my name stood in for the whole track.
Most of those answers belonged to someone else.
- A writer wrote the script.
- Quality control checked it. An engineer mixed it.
- A director shaped the read.
Those professionals, blind and sighted, deserve to be named in parity with everyone else who works on a film or series.
John Stark, a blind TV critic, keeps asking the same question in his reviews: who else made this track?
theADNA.org records Audio Description credits person by person. Audiences, and the people who hire, can see who did the work and how much skill it takes.
Ten Years Of Copy And Paste
For most of the site’s first decade, a credit went live like this: someone emailed me, and I (or someone helping me) copied the text into a WordPress blog post and hit publish.
It was slow. I kept making the same human mistakes.
I also kept a wish list for the site the whole time.
This year I rebuilt it from scratch, and much of that list is live now.
What Changed, In Short
The old site ran on blog software. Each person was one post, and their credits were typed text inside it. But the site couldn’t connect a person to a show, or a show to a role.
The new site is a database: records that link to each other. People, shows, and roles connect, so:
- Click any title and you see the full Audio Description team on it.
- Send credits through a form, with no account needed. Behind the scenes, we check each one before it goes live.
- Search finds shows as well as names.
- The podcast lives on the site, and old links still work.
- At launch in September 2026, the directory held more than 8,400 titles and 10,000 credits, across about 450 profiles. For today’s counts, see https://TheADNA.org
At launch in September 2026, the directory held more than 8,400 titles and 10,000 credits, across about 450 profiles. For today’s counts, see https://TheADNA.org
theADNA.org lists the people who made it.
Finding People And Shows
Each show has its own page. Click a title on a profile and you see everyone credited on it: writers, performers, directors, producers, engineers, and quality control.
Titles A to Z lists every show in alphabetical order, 24, 48, or 96 at a time.
Search ignores punctuation, so a missing apostrophe or colon won’t hide a result.
Each person has one profile that shows their role on each credit. Someone who writes and performs has one page with both.
Credits show the season and episode, and link to their source.
Sending Credits
Before, you emailed your credits and waited for someone to type them in.
Now the Submit credits page has a form. Paste your whole list, or only what’s new. You can attach a file up to 4 MB.
You get an email receipt right away, with a reference number and a copy of what you sent.
You can send credits for someone else. Your name stays private and doesn’t appear on the site.
The database software reads the text, then sorts your pasted list into the right fields. We check every credit before it goes live, and the person gets an email when it does.
Every 60 days, people get a reminder to send new credits. They can turn it off.
Each profile ends with a link to update it. Each page has a link at the bottom to send an update or report a problem.
The Podcast Lives On The Site
Before, the site linked out to Libsyn and YouTube.
Now episodes of The ADNA Presents are on theADNA.org, as text with a simple audio player.
Each guest links both ways: the episode goes to their profile, and their profile goes back to the episode.
A history page tells the story of the podcast from the start.
Old Links Still Work
All 565 old profile addresses forward to the new pages. Links in old emails, bookmarks, and Google results still land in the right place.
When someone’s name changes, their old address forwards to the new one.
Easier To Read And Use
The site uses Atkinson Hyperlegible, a font from the Braille Institute designed so each letter is easy to tell apart.
Headings go in order, and links say where they go. Screen reader users (people who hear the page read aloud by software) can jump straight to the part they want.
It works on phones and follows your device’s light or dark mode.
The About page holds the FAQ, the team, contact details, and support options, in sections you open and close.
Synthetic Voice Has Its Own Listing
People want to know if it’s a human voice or not.
Synthetic voice, meaning text-to-speech (TTS) where software reads the script, has its own listing with about 1,600 credits at launch (more than 3,000 titles by October 2026).
I wrote about what that number means for the people who made the film in A Solution To A Problem We Didn’t Know We Had.
What’s Next
Profile claiming and logins, so people can update their own pages. I’m aiming for end of the year.
Take A Look
Search your own name, or a show you loved. If a credit is missing or wrong, the Submit credits page fixes it.
Then tell us what you found, and what you want the site to be: Admin@TheADNA.org.
I’ve kept this site going for ten years, and I’ll keep going. For the last few years, one person has supported it every month, and that support keeps it running. Most of the cost is time. I check every credit by hand before it goes live, and monthly support pays for that checking. It’s what keeps the names on the site accurate.
Monthly support starts at $5.
Support theADNA.org monthly https://theadna.org/about