Capital Football Commentator Russ Gibbs has been selected as one of thirteen commentators across Australia and New Zealand to provide in-stadium Audio Descriptive Commentary (ADC) at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 and will commentate the World Cup Final on 20 August.
The ADC service will be offered for vision-impaired supporters at the Stadium for selected games during the FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament. Fans who are not able to travel to the stadiums, will be able to access the service from their home or at the FIFA Fan Festivals, via the FIFA Interpreting app.
“It’s fantastic to be offered the opportunity to be a part of the FIFA Women’s World Cup and to be able to provide this vital service to enable visually-impaired fans to experience the World Cup to full effect,” Gibbs said.
Gibbs has been selected for half-a-dozen matches at the tournament including the opening fixture between the Matildas and Ireland, two Round of 16 encounters, a Quarter Final, and a Semi-Final.
“To be selected to commentate on the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and particularly the Final, is a huge honour and one that I am pinching myself about. I hope to do the occasion justice,” Gibbs revealed.
“The training course, and associated assignments post-course, were extremely demanding and required a huge amount of concentration and the ability to accurately describe where the action was taking place.
“It was a tough task to get this far and is likely to be one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, commentary experiences I have had.”
Gibbs’ voice would be well-known to those who watch football in Australia having featured weekly on local National Premier League and Australia Cup games, as well as on men’s and women’s A-League in a career that has seem him featured on Fox Sports, ABC, Kayo Sports, SBS, Channel 10, Paramount+, BarTV, NPL.TV, and BT Sport overseas.
ADC is a dedicated service, enabling visually impaired individuals to follow live matches inside the stadium alongside their fellow supporters.
Specially trained commentators provide additional narration that describes all significant visual information during the live match experience, such as body language, facial expression, scenery, action, clothing, colours, and anything else that is important to conveying the image, venue, match, event, or surrounding ambience.
This service will be a first for football in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The service will be free and delivered in English.
To tune into the live ADC, listeners are required to download the FIFA Interpreting app which is available in the App Store and Google Play Store.
