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Re: Best Possible Audio Description

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From: Chris O'Brien
Date: Jul 27, 2021 7:27AM

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what is being said here, but I feel there are several assumptions being made which are leading you to these conclusions.

"the blind use video players about as much as they use mice"

This is akin to suggesting that people from the blind community only listen to radio and don't watch TV, which I can assure you is not true.

" If you thought an alt description of an image was tough, how about a scene packed with information, emotion, nuances, special effects, text images, and all the creativity of a Spielberg."

The role of the describer is not to jam everything you see and hear into the secondary audio track. Describers intuit context and bring that forward, where possible and spacing in a video allows. The big caveat here is that not all information should be weighted equally. The describer will prioritize what is critical to the narrative and attempt to bring that forward - but sometimes that is not possible. If there are larger gaps in dialogue then the describer can opt to include information with secondary and tertiary importance.

As Shawn mentioned, if you are the script writer, you can proactively analyze your script and identify and remove ambiguity, which will limit the amount of description you will need. Audio design is also important as the audio palette can also communicate a lot of information. This is often overlooked.

I can appreciate that it can appear overwhelming on the surface. Keep in mind that audio description is not meant to eliminate all discrepancies, it's meant to minimize them.

Chris O'Brien
Director of Accessibility
Legal and Litigation


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