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Re: Guidance on Audio Description

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: May 8, 2017 7:49AM

> Trying to wrap my head around when we need to provide Audio Descriptions and when Captioning is sufficient.

Corrine, captions are used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing as equivalents for audible information such as spoken text, sounds, and other auditory cues.

Audio description is used by people who are blind or visually impaired as an equivalent to visual information and clues that are not provided in the audio.

People often get these two concepts confused and attempt to describe things that are provided visually in the captions. They are two distinct needs although there is some overlap with people who are both visually impaired/blind and deaf or hard of hearing.

Generally you will need captions AND separately description of visual information-- and the information communicated and audience is different.

Keep in mind that additional audio description is only needed when visual aspects of the synchronized media are not already provided in audio. Media can be created where all visual aspects are communicated by the narrator or other audio and thus audio description that appears in the pauses of dialogue is not needed.

Best Regards,

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group 
<EMAIL REMOVED>
703.637.8957 (Office)
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