Before David* turned 17, he enjoyed porn as any teenage boy enjoyed porn in the early '90s: watching a friend's old VHS tape, or flipping through his brother's Penthouse magazine—a simple luxury of having 20/20 vision. Then, when he was 17 years old, David was hit in the face by a bullet from a 12-gauge shotgun during a drive-by shooting. He was blinded instantly.
The pages of Penthouse are far less stimulating when you can't see them.
After losing his sight, David, now a 41-year-old professor at a southern university, searched for porn on the Internet, settling on pornographic stories dictated to him by a screen-reading software or listening to regular porn videos without seeing the action. Then, last summer, he saw a tweet from Pornhub announcing new porn videos dubbed with spoken narration, specifically intended for the visually impaired. Thinking it a hoax, he clicked on the new content.
Then, he says, "I smiled."
Pornhub's porn for the blind created media buzz last June, with publications wondering at the paradox of blind people being able to watch porn. Porn, after all, is an art form first appreciated by the eyeballs. Pornhub initially released 50 narrated videos, found under its "Described Video" category, which visually impaired users can navigate using screen-reading software. Narration is performed by a handful of male and female readers who describe the action of the video in level voices. Finding the right tone was important, says Alex Klein, Pornhub's marketing manager. "We didn't want it to be like, super porny and over the top and exaggerated, because the video has its own thing going on," says Klein. "We also on the same token didn't want it to be very clinical and dry."
Narrated porn existed before Pornhub's venture, but it could be "cheesy," David says. Audio porn has been around for years too, but it's often one actor talking through a sexual situation or coaxing the listener to climax—almost like a conversation, leaving more room for imagination. Pornhub's content simply takes existing videos and adds a narration track to help the visually impaired know exactly what to imagine, without losing the frank sexualization of commercial porn. "The description makes it much more vivid, much more real," says David.
Pornhub released a second batch of more than 15 videos in late November. The company made a few tweaks after receiving feedback from the blind community—mainly, users suggested fixing the sound levels so the narration did not drown out the organic audio of the videos. (Because the company does not make the original videos, it does not make money from this content, Klein says.)
"I think the best thing about the narration is that they use good descriptors," says David. "'The brunette takes off her clothes and shows her shaved pussy'—that's pretty descriptive! But that's what makes it enjoyable."
Traditional porn is confusing if you can't see what's going on. A grunt doesn't indicate the exact positioning of the actors; "You're so big" doesn't indicate exact dimensions. Are they having sex on an office desk or a leather couch? And slinky music can distract from the few spurts of intelligible dialogue. In 2016, top searches on Pornhub included "lesbians scissoring," "Harley Quinn," and "ebony"—all preferences based on striking visual elements. Everyone has a type.
"Sometimes, sounds can only portray a certain amount of what's happening," says Tanner*, 34, who lives in Queensland, Australia, and has been completely blind since age 3. When consuming non-dubbed porn, he'll try to guess what's happening, sometimes asking his girlfriend for help. "She will describe what the scene is, and I'll sort of go, 'Wow, I was completely wrong.'"
The new, narrated content on Pornhub tries to cater to a diversity of sexual proclivities, ranging from stepmoms and stepdaughters to transgender actors to Ray J and Kim Kardashian's sex tape. "We really wanted to be well-rounded," says Klein.
Tanner—who watches most types of porn, but isn't very interested in gay and anal—estimates he has seen about 90 percent of Pornhub's narrated content. Then he finds the same video in its unnarrated version so he can focus on the organic sounds of the video without narration drowning them out. "Once I know what's going on in the scene, I don't need the description," he says.
David—who's more into threesomes and orgies—has seen "maybe a dozen" of the videos all the way through, plus an additional 15 or 20 he never finished. Both say they appreciate the variety of described videos, and both wish there were more.
There are still technical kinks to work out. Some of the content, by virtue of being free on Pornhub, cuts off before anyone really climaxes. "You had two office workers—female office workers—and a male office worker, and it was like four minutes long, and it sort of abruptly ended," David says of one such video. "And I was like, why would you bother narrating something that just abruptly ends?" And there are fewer than 70 videos on the website so far. But it's a start.
"I don't want to sound corny, it's not like you're really, really watching it…" David says, then trails off. It's just the next best thing.
*Names changed to protect identity.
