Audio Description Illinois:
Workshop Outline
April 2007
Compiled by Channy
Lyons and Tom Peters
Introduction to Audio Description
Introductions
Presenter:
Tom Peters
Attendees:
Channy Lyons helped create this workshop
outline
Why Are We Here?
What is Audio Description?
3 Stages:
Look, write, record
Or 5 Stages:
Look, look again carefully, write, edit carefully, record
Short Definition: Audio Description (AD) is a narrative
technique that makes visual images more accessible to blind and low-vision
people by producing written and audible descriptions of non-verbal visual
information.
To put it another way, AD makes the visual
verbal. Using AD techniques, it takes
far less than a thousand words to describe a picture -- and the benefits for the
visually impaired are enormous.
Long Definition:
”Audio Description (AD) is the descriptive narration of key visual elements of
digital images, live theater, museums, television, movies, and other media to
enhance their enjoyment by people who are blind or have impaired vision. It
allows people who are blind to access content that is not otherwise accessible
simply by listening to the audio. AD
gives people a more complete picture of what is being shown, enabling them to
appreciate and to share in the presentation as fully as a sighted person. AD
attempts to describe what the sighted person takes for granted.”
(Source: Audio Description International)
Various Uses of Audio
Description
·
Videos and DVDs
·
Live theater and opera
·
Television shows
·
Museum exhibits
·
Websites of all types
·
Web conferences and other live online events
·
Digital Libraries
Modes of Audio Description:
1. Live and spontaneous
2. Planned and pre-recorded
Recording Options:
1. Recording of a Human Reading the AD
2. Synthetic Text-to-Speech
The Value and Potential of AD
Audio Description gives blind and low-vision
people access to image information – information that enriches a story,
completes thoughts, engages emotions, and amplifies experience.
It expands the experience of website content
for blind listeners and creates the excitement sighted viewers feel.
“It puts a blind person and a sighted person
on the same page,” the executive director of the American Council for the Blind
said recently. “It provides people with an equal opportunity to hate the same
show or think it’s great.”
Today the visually impaired can attend
movies, theater productions, sporting events and museum tours at venues where
AD is offered. In 2006, 63 first run movies were produced with AD tracks. DVDs
of the movies Miami Vice, United 93, Munich and Inside
Man also had AD tracks. And the number of opportunities is increasing.
Watching The Godfather with Audio
Description, one blind listener commented, “I could actually smell the olive
trees!”
Brief History of Audio Description
Audio Description
was developed in the early 1980s. A woman named Margaret Pfanstiehl is credited
with its invention.
Margaret was an
opera singer – a promising mezzo-soprano -- who was forced to abandon her
career when she began to loose her sight. In the ‘70s she founded a non-profit
organization called the Metropolitan Washington Ear. It was one of the early organizations
to launch a radio reading service. A few years later, the Ear was the first in
the nation to initiate an audio description program for theater.
Margaret and her
husband Cody partnered with station WGBH, Boston’s PBS station, and in 1984 they
inaugurated descriptions to accompany television programs.
She fought
tirelessly to bring about changes in FCC rules that would make audio
description services available for television viewers across the nation.
Over the years,
Margaret and her husband trained hundreds of audio describers who went on to
write and record descriptions and to train many more people to work in this new
field. Today organizations, such as AD International, offer information about
AD and links to service providers. Boston’s WGBH continues to be a leader in
the development of AD for TV and film.
Most TVs are now
equipped with the special audio channel needed to broadcast audio descriptions.
In theaters and movie houses, users hear the Audio Description via small
earpiece or earphones connected to a small receiver.
In the future, AD
may be added to audio books and be used in long-distance learning to amplify
the educational experience.
Principles and Tips
When recorded, audio descriptions usually are
short – 40 seconds, maybe 60 seconds. Which means that once you’ve taken in the
details of the image, you’ll have to select those elements that are critical to
an understanding and appreciation of the image. Look for the essence of the
picture, and hone your editorial skills.
As to the words you use in your description,
first thing to do is to get out your Thesaurus because you want to choose
clear, concise, vivid words. Words that are robust, hold content. Words and phrases that conjure images in the
listener’s mind.
Audio Description is a creative activity.
It’s a language art form that calls upon its participants to be observant and
then selective.
Your job as an Audio Describer is to “say
only what you see.” Use your sense
of sight fully. Be an active see-er. Then describe what you see clearly,
concisely, and objectively, in language that is understandable to the average
educated person.
Here are 8 Guiding Principles to help
you figure out how to “say what you see.”
1. Be objective. Use objective words.
2. Identify what’s important to the
description.
3. Use imaginatively drawn phrases, comparisons
and metaphors that help the listener to imagine and understand.
4. Be concise and precise.
5. Use language that is rich and varied.
6. Write to read.
7. Use present tense in your descriptions.
8. Be aware of the obvious.
Practice Round in Pairs (Pullman Porter)
Key Elements of Images
1. What’s its style? (black and white; color;
sepia)
2. What’s the orientation or focus of the
picture? (close-up; wide angle view)
3. What about the setting? (Interior?
Exterior?)
4. And the perspective
5. The time period?
6. If there are people in the picture: Are
they posed? Or is this a candid shot? What are they wearing? Describe their
facial features.
7. The objects
8. Describe the aesthetics
Strategies for Writing Audio Descriptions
Structure
One thing to know about writing audio
descriptions is how to structure them.
The key is to work from general to the
specific.
Here’s an outline to follow:
First, introduce the work. Include the title of
the picture and the caption. Give the time period, and the style (or look) of
the picture (black and white or sepia tones).
Second, provide an Overview statement. What is in
the picture? People, place, setting.
What is the image mainly about?
Third, describe specific features and details.
In describing the photograph, move logically
through the image so the listener can easily follow you.
Style
Length
On average Audio Descriptions of a photograph
are about 30-60 seconds in length.
Questions and Issues
Should you provide speculative
interpretations of elements of the image that may be indistinct or unclear?
Should you research the background of the
image and elements of the image?
Should information be included in audio
descriptions that is not readily apparent from only a visual examination of the
image?
Practice Round Individually (Pope
Building in Quincy)
Recording Options: Synthetic Narration (Text-to-Speech) Using NeoSpeech
Software
Two Processing Options:
1. You
can send your written Audio Descriptions to Tom Peters, who will use NeoSpeech
to create the synthetic narrations.
2. You
can load the NeoSpeech software on a PC at your location and create your own
synthetic narrations.
Metadata Matters
MaRC Records
ContentDM
Tagging
Assessing the Usage and Impact of Your AD
Efforts
Web server logs
Surveys
Next Steps
Write 10-12 audio descriptions for images in
your digital imaging project.
Follow-up One-on-One Phone Consultations
Online Meetings for Small Groups
Contact Information
Tom Peters
TAP Information Services
1000 SW 23rd Street
Blue Springs, MO 64015
phone: 816-228-6406
email: tapinformation@yahoo.com
web: www.tapinformation.com
Websites and Further Reading
•
Peters, Tom, and Bell,
Lori. 2006. Audio Description Adds Value to Digital
Images. Computers in Libraries 26
(4): 26-28.