Are there blind actors

Jason Momoa stars as Baba Voss — the father of twins born with the mythic ability to see. Queen Kane, played by Sylvia Hoeks, is the ruler of the Payan tribe, one of the only places that still has electricity. In a world where sight is considered a forbidden heresy, she tasks her tribe with finding the children who are rumored to have this mythic ability.

Like all of the other content on the platform, the show features audio description in nine languages. None of these are region-locked, either. One nice surprise for me was that these tracks are mixed in Dolby Atmos, giving them a more three-dimensional quality. There are little things, like using a sword to determine the texture changes in the ground, to the use of an approximation of guide dogs.

Character use ropes to effortlessly guide themselves from one place to another. All of this detail, thankfully, is conveyed through the audio description. I can only identify Tansy Alexander as the narrator because she has described other popular titles, such as Stranger Things. All of this is fantastic. As a result, I could only watch the three episodes that were released at the time of this writing.

Those episodes portray a brutal world in which violence is an everyday fact of life. This enables the series to explore the ways blind people interact with the world. But how much of the large cast includes people who are actually visually impaired? See is definitely different. The accommodations are a natural part of their life, instead of an exception to the rule. The result is a society where blind people are able to function easily and efficiently.

For example, different factions are waging war to take control of the world. During the battles, warriors are able to approach and attack their enemies using tongue-clicking noises and tapping sounds. Normally, people would pass a written note, gesture with their hands, shoot messages with their eyes, or soundlessly mouth instructions.

But in the world of See, where all characters are blind, communicating without making a sound can be tricky. That's where hand signals come in. One by one, the characters in the scene squeeze the arm of the person next to them before tracing a message on their neighbor's hand. The message is passed from one person to the next until everyone on the raft knows what's going on. Those hand signals are inspired by the real-life techniques used by Joe Strechay, the show's associate producer and blindness consultant.

Strechay has a unique role in the entertainment business: making sure people with visual impairments are portrayed realistically -- well, at least as realistically as they can be in a sci-fi show about a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is sightless.

That even comes to fight scenes, with Strechay working with stunt coordinators on how someone who is blind would fight. The plot revolves around society years in the future, after a virus wiped out most of humanity. All 2 million of the people left are blind -- except two children who are born with sight in the first moments of the series. When it comes to the on-screen portrayal of blind people over the years, the image has been far from flattering, experts say.

See tries to avoid those stereotypes, but there's nothing normal about the show's plot. The fantasy show mixes elements common to blockbusters like Game of Thrones, including power struggles and persecution. The evil, mad Queen Kane sends an army of witch hunters to find the sighted children, while their adopted father warrior, Momoa's Baba Voss, does all he can to protect them over the first season's eight episodes. See is notable for more than being one of Apple TV Plus' first shows.

It's also one of the first shows anywhere to include a large cast of people who are blind or low vision. See's stars, Jason Momoa and four-time Emmy winner Alfre Woodard, aren't blind, but many other members of the cast and crew are. They "helped bring this inclusive and authentic world to life," Apple said.

Gender and racial diversity have been a focal point for companies for several years -- and have become even more urgent with the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of Minnesotan George Floyd. People with disabilities have also rallied for corporations and the public to respect their needs, and last week marked the ninth annual Global Accessibility Day, which highlights that effort.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has brought new challenges for people with disabilities, who are trying to ensure their needs aren't left behind as society adapts to a new normal.

Globally, at least 2. In the US, over 1 million people over the age of 40 are blind, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By , that number could skyrocket to about 9 million because of the "increasing epidemics of diabetes and other chronic diseases and our rapidly aging US population," the CDC said.

Still, roles like Strechay's are rare. And in the past, such consultants rarely were blind themselves.