What is audio description?

Audio description is a spoken commentary, inserted into pauses in dialogue, that conveys key visual elements of a film, programme, or performance to blind and partially sighted audiences.

How is SDH different from ordinary subtitling?

Subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing adds information that hearing viewers get from the soundtrack—who is speaking and what non-speech sounds occur—rather than only translating dialogue.

Media Accessibility and Audio Description

Media accessibility makes audiovisual content available to audiences with sensory impairments through services such as audio description and subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Definition

Audiovisual translation services that make media accessible to people with sensory impairments, principally audio description and subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Scope

This topic covers accessibility-oriented audiovisual translation: audio description, which renders visual information into spoken commentary for blind and partially sighted audiences; subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, which adds speaker identification and sound information to subtitles; and the conception of accessibility as a form of intersemiotic and intralingual translation. It treats guidelines and standards, the user communities served, and the policy and rights frameworks that drive provision. The treatment is descriptive.

Core questions

How does audio description convert images into words?
How does subtitling for the deaf differ from interlingual subtitling?
In what sense is accessibility a form of translation?
What standards and rights frameworks govern media accessibility?

Key theories

Accessibility as intersemiotic translation: The framing of audio description as an intersemiotic translation from image to verbal language, extending the concept of translation beyond interlingual transfer to access services for sensory-impaired audiences.
Subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing: Josélia Neves's account of intralingual subtitling that conveys not only dialogue but speaker identity and non-speech sound information, adapting subtitling conventions to the needs of deaf audiences.

History

Media accessibility moved from the margins to the centre of audiovisual translation in the 2000s, driven by disability-rights legislation, broadcasting quotas for access services, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The 'Media for All' research strand consolidated audio description and subtitling for the deaf as core audiovisual-translation topics.

Debates

Objectivity and detail in audio description: Describers debate how much to describe and how far to interpret rather than merely report visual content, balancing neutrality, time constraints, and the informational and emotional needs of users.

Key figures

Jorge Díaz Cintas
Anna Matamala
Josélia Neves
Louise Fryer

Seminal works

neves2005
diazcintas2010
fryer2016

Frequently asked questions

What is audio description?: Audio description is a spoken commentary, inserted into pauses in dialogue, that conveys key visual elements of a film, programme, or performance to blind and partially sighted audiences.
How is SDH different from ordinary subtitling?: Subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing adds information that hearing viewers get from the soundtrack—who is speaking and what non-speech sounds occur—rather than only translating dialogue.