Edinburgh is a city that likes to be looked at as much as we love looking at it. Come August, the beautiful streets are packed with performers and festival crowds. But not everyone experiences Edinburgh through their eyes. For blind and partially sighted residents and visitors, the city’s cultural attractions can be less than accessible and far less enjoyable.
But Edinburgh doesn’t discriminate, and strives to accommodate all of its spectators. Sound, touch and more thoughtful organisation will get us there. Audio description is becoming an important part of cultural life, and, in addition, we have both live narration and recorded material. Sometimes, preparing that material involves the less exciting part of converting audio between formats. For instance, Convertio offers an mp3 to wav converter that can turn compressed recordings into uncompressed PCM audio for editing workflows that require WAV files.
The reverse process can also be useful. Producers can convert wav to mp3 when they need smaller recordings that are easier to download, share or play on common devices. Of course, accessibility requires considerably more than changing a file format.
Its time to take a closer look at the 2026 festival season and emanime the changes, because there is a lot of technical work going on behind the scenes.
Edinburgh’s 2026 Festivals Made Accessibility a Priority
There are several significant developments to go through. Edinburgh Festival Fringe partnered with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Scotland to offer a free sighted-guide service between 7 and 31 August 2026. The reason is quite mundane. Edinburgh becomes difficult to navigate during festival season, even for people who know the city well. Immeasurably harder for blind and partially sighted visitors.
Instead of concentrating only on what happens inside a theatre, the new collaboration took on the problem of reaching it.
Not only that, the Fringe’s 2026 programme has more than one accessibility service. From audio-described shows and touch tours to live and prerecorded audio introductions.
- What’s listed for audio description? Boys Don’t Dance, presented by Marc Brew Company at Dance Base between 7 and 23 August, excluding two dates. A trained describer will communicate important physical actions and changes in position to uplift the music and the atmosphere, not overwhelm it.
- The National Theatre of Scotland’s Through the Shortbread Tin, performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, also appeared in the audio-described programme, with dates on 14 and 24 August.
- Another production, One Hundred Voices, offers a touch tour at the Scottish Parliament on 22 August. Visitors could take part in a guided tactile introduction before the performance.
- The Fringe’sofficial enhanced-performance programme documented these arrangements alongside accessible performance information and booking requirements.
In 2026, the Edinburgh International Festival also contributed to the amount of information audiences had access to. Following feedback from its Access Panel, a group of disabled people advising on accessibility, the festival introduced five animated guides explaining its access arrangements, including how to navigate the festival’s services and prepare for a visit.
The programs are designed to tackle various facets of the same issue. A performance can be adapted for an individual who is visually impaired, but the individual must be able to identify it, understand available assistance and be able to make appropriate arrangements to attend the performance.
Audio Accessibility Doesn’t End When the Performance Does
As cultural programming becomes more accessible, the question remains: What happens to the material people hear before, during and after an event?
Not all descriptions are delivered live.
Prerecorded audio introductions to performances were part of the programme of the Fringe in 2026. These might be used to describe the actors, scenery and other images prior to the production. In some instances the recordings were made available online.
That means that an introduction can be used without the help of a live describer, though it is not a substitute for more detailed commentary needed during some performances.
The creation of this material is a normal technical procedure of audio production. Narration should be recorded, edited for clarity, checked and distributed in an appropriate format for the required platform.
The audio recording taken with a smart phone could be an M4A file. Editing software may require or work more conveniently with WAV, while MP3 can be useful for distributing relatively compact recordings to listeners.
Web-based tools akin to Convertio can be helpful if anyone is creating similar accessible recordings. It helps convert between basic audio formats, enabling producers to get ready files for a variety of editing or playback software without having to install a separate converter.
Audio cannot be recovered from any compression process when conversion is made to WAV. Similarly, when converting WAV to MP3, no compression is lost from the original, therefore, it may be worth keeping a master copy for further editing.
- What’s important is maintaining an intelligible and easy-to-follow narrative and ensuring that the final product is compatible with the platforms audiences are using.
- Another aspect of accessibility that can be overlooked are details. Is the recording distinctly labeled? Does it have a location and play for a screen reader user? Are the controls on the media player accessible? Is there an appropriate pacing for narration while using visual aid?
- A technically compatible file is just a small part of the process.
- There are also differences between prerecorded audio description and live theatrical audio description. Live describers comment on the action and the timing of a performance, adapting their narration to fit the dialogue, sound and music. It can’t just be reshaped into another format by recording a file.
The programmes from Edinburgh in 2026 illustrated the importance of using multiple technologies as opposed to relying on a single technology to satisfy all requirements.
The Fringe’s sighted-guide partnership covered the issue of navigation. Video described performances transferred visual action. The touch tours provided hands-on experience of the scene setting. Auditioned introductions provided listeners with information to hear on their own.
None of these provisions enables universally accessible cultural landscape in the city. Services are not offered at all performances, and in some instances have to be booked in advance; historic buildings still cause physical problems.
However, the initiatives carried out in 2026 offer a good example of how accessibility is thought throughout the experience of the visitor and not just during the show.
Edinburgh has always been a city that has much to offer its visitors. The challenge is making sure that seeing is not a prerequisite for enjoying what the city has to offer.
