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 is now the managing editor of the ITFC's audio description department[4] and continues to work as an audio describer on television programmes and films.