Ross Grant: Life as a visually impaired voiceover artist 

October is Blindness Awareness Month. According to the World Health Organisation, there are 285 million people who are visually impaired worldwide, 39 million of whom are completely blind. As a studio we do a lot of work with audio description to help improve accessibility for the world of tv. We wanted to take the opportunity to shine a spotlight on Ross Grant, one of our incredibly talented voice artists. We spoke to him about what life’s been like working as a visually impaired voiceover artist and how it’s been a complete game-changer for him.

Ross has a condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which usually starts from a young age. Initially it is most noticeable at night and then gradually erodes peripheral vision over time. He began noticing the effects from the age of 13, apparently causing one too many near death experiences, with cars he’s not seen, for his liking!

Ross’s first love was acting, having worked on sets for a number of years, it got to a point where his things started to become more difficult. Night shoots were a real challenge and then increasingly it became more difficult to hit his marks during the day. Ross is a pretty confident guy but these increasing challenges in his work, all this started to get him. He began second guessing himself on set, focusing more on his limitations than the enjoyment of acting.

So not one to be deterred, he still loved acting and performing, however he realised he needed a rethink of where his skills could take him next. Enter voiceover work, stage left! Ross realised he could still do the things he loved, just in a different setting, that worked around his life and even better he didn’t need to worry about hurting himself or feeling self conscious in the process.

This is a career that he can’t recommend highly enough for people with visual impairment or any other disability for that matter. Technology has made things so much easier, going into a studio he feels empowered to create the right set-up with script sizes and screen brightness with no need to explain his disability. One upside to the pandemic, was being forced into setting up a home studio in his wardrobe, connecting to any studio worldwide with Source Connect. This has made it even easier for him to do the work he loves and is truly liberating.

Now with over 20 years in the industry: on everything from adverts; corporate work; documentaries; to his favourite element of his job animation projects. Recently he’s starred in Simon as Professor Wolf on Netflix, Mangia Fuoco in the upcoming Pinocchio series on the BBC and the lead role in Tinpo on Cbeebies. Ross even goes as far to say that he now enjoys voicing animation projects, more than live acting work. It’s the creativity of creating the voice and accent for the character and sometimes several characters in one show that plus the fun scripts he gets to embody that makes it such an amazing industry to work in.

On working with The Voiceover Gallery, Ross said “The support from Marylou and the team has been amazing and I’m forever grateful. Without them I wouldn’t have the life I have now.”

We think it’s all about Ross’s incredible attitude to life, that’s got him where he is today though. His parting words were “It’s all about whether you think you can or can’t do something. It’s just belief, I could just focus on my limitations but it’s more about finding the things I can do with the skills I have!” A lesson that I think we all could do to remember in life.

Get in touch if you’d like to book Ross for a job, here’s his profile.