James O'Hara (announcer)

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James O'Hara is a former Scottish television continuity announcer.

O'Hara, a graduate of Manchester University and Aberdeen University, worked at Grampian Television as a staff announcer and newsreader.

He switched to BBC Scotland during the mid-1970s and became one of their first full-time television announcers. In common with other BBC Scotland announcers, O'Hara also directed transmission and read Scottish News summaries both in and out of vision. [1]

He left the corporation in 1988 and became a freelance for BBC North East and BBC West Yorkshire FM (now known as BBC Radio Leeds). In 1994, O'Hara became an audio describer for Audetel, a trial providing audio description of television programmes for blind and partially sighted viewers. [2] The trial was a success and led to the legislation of audio description for digital terrestrial television within the 1996 Broadcasting Act. [3]

O'Hara was the managing editor of the Deluxe's audio description department, [4] working as an audio describer on television programmes and films until his retirement in 2016.

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