The Home Economics Story
1951 · Documentary · Short
A high-school senior named Kay decides to study home economics at Iowa State College, and the film follows her from the family kitchen table to her first night in the dormitory and on into her classes. Made by Iowa State College's Home Economics Division.
This film has an audio description track, written and recorded here, so a blind or low-vision viewer can follow it by ear. There is nothing to switch on — the description is in the film’s own sound, so pressing play is the whole of it.
We describe films like this for archives and filmmakers: see what audio description costs and audio description for independent films.
Free to watch via internet-archive.
Is The Home Economics Story public domain? The rights evidence — the copyright registration, the renewal search and the sources we checked, written out in full so you can check them too.
Watch it here
This is our restoration, with the audio description track mixed in. There is nothing to switch on: press play and the description is in the sound. It is free, there is no account, and nothing is counted.
Sound only — 48 MB rather than 280 MB. Everything the described master says, without the picture.
Or watch it with the picture:
The same film without description, if you would rather have the original sound alone.
Every film here that carries audio description — what description is, who it is for, and how ours are made.
How this print was restored
This copy of The Home Economics Story was restored here, from a print that had been through a good deal before it reached us. The work finished on 2026-09-02. Every step is listed below, because a re-encode passed off as a restoration is worth nothing and the only way to tell them apart is to say what was done.
- deflicker (frame brightness varied 4.91 within scenes); levels stretch (black 16, white 191 measured over every second of the film); deband; audio spectral denoise (floor -22 dBFS); true-peak limiter (source -0.9 dBTP); 74 audio description cues, Kokoro am_michael at 166 wpm, seated by measured length in measured dialogue pauses, 0 collisions; delivery mix -16.0 LUFS / -2.0 dBTP; title card joined without re-encoding the picture
The print we started from is here, so the before and after can be compared.