ABSTRACT

The American Council of the Blind (ACB) Recipient of the 2022 Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl Audio Description Achievement Award for Research and Development

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the expanding field of audio description, the practice of rendering the visual elements of a multimodal product such as a film, painting, or live performance in the spoken mode, for the benefit principally of the blind and visually impaired community. This volume brings together scholars, researchers, practitioners and service providers, such as broadcasters from all over the world, to cover as thoroughly as possible all the theoretical and practical aspects of this discipline.

In 38 chapters, the expert authors chart how the discipline has become established both as an important professional service and as a valid academic subject, how it has evolved and how it has come to play such an important role in media accessibility. From the early history of the subject through to the challenges represented by ever-changing technology, the Handbook covers the approaches and methodologies adopted to analyse the “multimodal” text in the constant search for the optimum selection of the elements to describe.

This is the essential guide and companion for advanced students, researchers and audio description professionals within the more general spheres of translation studies and media accessibility.

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

  1. The question of accessibility

  2. Access services for the blind and partially sighted: a social and legal framework for the promotion of audio description

  3. A profile of audio description end-users: linguistic needs and inclusivity

  4. A cognitive approach to audio description: production and reception processes

  5. Narratology and/in audio description

  6. Linguistic and textual aspects of audio description

  7. Audio description and culture specific elements

  8. "Ut pictura poesis": the rendering of an aesthetic artistic image in form and content

  9. Audio description for the theatre: a research-based practice

  10. Opera and dance audio description

  11. Audio description for the screen

  12. Museum audio description: the role of ADLAB PRO

  13. Audio description in museums: a service provider perspective

  14. Visitor studies: the impact of inclusive museum audio description experiences

  15. Audio describing churches: in search of a template

  16. The audio description professional: a sociological overview and new training perspectives

  17. Audio description: a public broadcaster’s core business and headache

  18. Profiling audio description service providers: a questionnaire-based snapshot

  19. Research in audio description

  20. Audio Description Software

  21. Receptor Tools

  22. Artificial Voices

  23. Video games and audio description

  24. Automating audio description

  25. Audio description personalisation

  26. Audio introductions

  27. Audio subtitling

  28. Audio description translation: a retrospective

  29. Audio description translation: a pilot study Chinese/Spanish

  30. Audio description for the non-blind

  31. University training

  32. In-house training: the course at Bayerischer Rundfunk

  33. Audio description in the United States

  34. Audio description in Canada

  35. Audio description in Australia

  36. Audio description in Russia

  37. Audio description in Brazil

  38. Audio description in Slovenia

Index

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