Life Experience of the Blind from Special Screenings in Cinema and Image Reading (Case Study the blinds from Tehran, Amol, Karaj, Shiraz and Mashhad)

Going to the cinema is one of the needs of the blind population of Iran. Due to the limitations of the blind, these people use this cultural opportunity in a limited way and with special conditions. The purpose of this study is to understand the meanings of the lived experience of the blind from the cinema. To interpret the experience, Van Menen's Method of interpretive phenomenology was used. Targeted and snowball sampling was performed with semi-structured interviews until theoretical data saturation. Finally, the lived experience of 25 congenitally blind people who go to cinema was analyzed. Data collection tools are observation and interview. Findings of the study includes 5 themes, watching a movie, multidimensional pleasure, screaming, making a dream come true and taking a step forward. Sofar no qualitative research has been done on the blind of the cinema audience and their lived experience in an interpretive way. The results of the research show that the ritual of going to the cinema can be a step towards realizing the dream of the blind in equipping ordinary cinemas; they feel like they belong and enjoy this solidarity. But the life description, along with the release of the film as an unusual method, causes many problems in conveying the meaning of the images to the blind. Filmmakers have no knowledge of the principles of description and have not been trained. Participants also called for cinemas to be equipped with sound systems for the blind and to achieve the goals of the inclusive community.