Fred Brack   Raleigh, NC

Fred Brack Receives ACB/ADP Achievement Awards

In July of 2025, Fred received the following award at the annual Conference of the American Council of the Blind.

Award Presentation
by Joel Snyder, PhD

The Barry Levine Memorial Award for Career Achievement in Audio Description is presented to Fred Brack for his outstanding achievements in audio-description over the past 25 years. Fred's extensive background and experience make him an outstanding candidate for this prestigious award. Fred is a graduate of Brown University, where he learned the basics of voice work at the college AM radio station. He was the first Program Director of WBRU-FM, Brown's commercial radio station, and has held various roles including PD, DJ, Announcer, News, and Production. In 1999, Fred was trained as an Audio Describer by Joel Snyder and has been working with Arts Access ever since. He has also been the webmaster for ACB’s Audio Description Project since 2003, where he compiles the only complete listing of USA DVD, TV, and Streaming Services. As an experienced Audio Describer, Fred can consult on or write/modify descriptions for audio tours or videos for people who are blind or have low vision and write descriptions for museum art and statues. He is also a technical proof-reader with an emphasis on usability. Despite retiring twice, first from IBM in 1999 and then from his Internet-based business in June 2015, Fred continues to do professional Audio Description and Voice-Over work from home. He is currently involved in redesigning the adp.acb.org web site. Congratulations Fred.

Award Acceptance Speech
by Fred Brack

Naturally I very much appreciate receiving this recognition from the American Council of the Blind; but receiving the Barry Levine Memorial Award for Career Achievement in Audio Description is especially meaningful to me since I met Barry in 2002, we became friends, and he asked me to be the webmaster of his unique website on Audio Description. Following Barry’s untimely death in 2009, I maintained his website for a year more until Joel Snyder convinced the ACB to take it on – and look what it has become today.

When I began as webmaster, I struggled to find one or two described DVDs each year. By 2016, we had 570 described DVDs, but the world of audio description was about to open up with streaming services Netflix and iTunes committing to providing description. Today, we have over 12,000 described offerings available from over 20 sources. It has been my pleasure to curate this wonderful collection of described media for people like my wife Kathy, who is blind, and for all of you. Barry would be so proud of what has become of his original website. Thank you for this most meaningful recognition.

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In June of 2016, Fred received the following award at the annual Conference of the American Council of the Blind.

ACB/ADP Achievement in Audio Description - Media

In the Media category, we are pleased to acknowledge a gentleman who has done a great deal to promote audio description in North Carolina, but also for audio description lovers all over the world!  I’m speaking of our own Fred Brack, webmaster of the Audio Description Project’s website.  Fred has gone above and beyond in his work to both educate, inform, and engage everyone to interact with audio description. He is a tireless advocate of audio description and keeps the ADP website up to date with the latest information on Audio description.

Users of audio description use the website to learn about arts opportunities whether it be in a museum, TV broadcast, DVD, home video and streaming, and much more. Even though the options for audio description have expanded exponentially over the years, Fred keeps up on the information and still is able to update the site constantly.  He has also done an amazing job making sure the website has an important presence on the web. If you go to Google and type in audio description as a search term, the ADP website is consistently at the top of the indexed list as a link on audio description. It gives the ADP an international presence and is one of the leading educational sources on audio description.

Congratulations, Fred!

Chris Gray, Chair, Awards Committee
ACB Audio Description Project
July 8, 2016, Minneapolis, MN