What is Audio Description?
“It is an oral and literary art form that creates access for visually impaired persons to the visual world through language. The visual is made verbal through innovative use of words to communicate visual events, either in real time or pre-recorded. Audio description has diverse applications and is relevant to a growing range of industries.”
Who benefits from Audio Description?
Who benefits most from Audio Description services are primarily persons with visual impairments.
“The primary audience for AD is people who are blind, have low vision or a colour vision deficiency (‘colour blindness’).
AD is also useful to people who cannot focus on visuals for other reasons. This includes people with cognitive and learning disabilities, and people who need to concentrate on multiple tasks. The National Disability Authority (NDA) of Ireland notes: ‘It is not only vision impaired viewers who benefit from audio description. It can be very helpful to any viewer who is unable to give the programme their full visual attention because they are engaged in another task… A study of sighted older users by the Audetel project showed that audio description improved comprehension and enjoyment of a police drama programme.”