James O'Hara is a former

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

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 BBC Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: ''BBC Alba'') is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. It is one of the four BBC national regions, together with the BBC English Regions, BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Northern Ireland. I ...

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. He left the corporation in 1988 and became a freelance for

BBC North East BBC North East and Cumbria is one of BBC's English Regions covering Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, City of Sunderland, County Durham, Northumberland, most parts of North Yorkshire & Cumbria. The region pro ...

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. The trial was a success and led to the legislation of audio description for digital terrestrial television within the 1996 Broadcasting Act. O'Hara was the managing editor of the Deluxe's audio description department,ITFC - Audio description
working as an audio describer on television programmes and films until his retirement in 2016.

References

Living people Radio and television announcers Year of birth missing (living people) {{UK-tv-bio-stub