A brief overview of the basic principles and types of audio description (often abbreviated and referred to as “AD”) contributed by Krishna Washburn.

Audio Description is the means by which blind and visually impaired people experience and access art and media forms that are typically considered to be predominantly visual in nature. 

Audio Description is a relatively modern phenomenon, although blind people engaging with art and media is not, nor are blind artists themselves. According to many sources, audio description as a way to make predominantly visual media accessible to blind and visually impaired people originated with the research of Gregory Frazier, a sighted graduate student at San Francisco State University in the 1970s. Frazier’s primary media of concern was television and film, and he encouraged the development of specific, objective scripts to provide information about the visual aspects of the program. 

Gregory Frazier’s obituary in The New York Times from 1996 was titled “Helped Blind See Movies With Their Ears.” Obituaries are really fascinating documents, because they not only explain the reasons why we value the lives of certain people, but they really demonstrate the values of our culture as a whole. Nobody knows what Gregory Frazier would have thought of his obituary being titled in such a way, but one might consider that this title for his obituary really explains a lot about how audio description is currently being used, and what purpose most arts and media presenters think it serves.

I am a blind person and I have listened to an enormous amount of audio description in my life. My ears have never “seen” anything, because ears can’t see. They hear. I understand that The New York Times isn’t proposing that there are any other bodily organs that can see other than eyes, and that this sort of language is supposed to be poetic and beautiful for some reason. I don’t find it beautiful. I suspect that to certain sighted people, the idea of the ears of a blind person being able to see is beautiful. That is ableism at its most insidious, and one of its most common forms.

The basic principles of audio description were designed as a compliment specifically for pre-recorded arts and entertainment in which the performers communicate with their voices. According to Gregory Frazier’s guidelines for appropriate audio description for television programs and movies, audio describers should include the following kinds of information:

• Describe What You See: This includes the background setting, including temporal information (day or night, which season, information about weather, which performers are present, movements that the performers make, and possibly, especially if it is important to the story, what the performers are wearing.
• Objective Information Only: In the original guidelines developed along with Gregory Frazier, there is to be a focus on objective information only. For example, if a performer slams a door, the audio describer just says that, and doesn’t say that the performer seems angry or seems to be in a rush, or any other reason for slamming the door. The idea behind this is that the dialogue of the performers and the overall story will lead the audience to understand the purpose behind the action. However, it can be argued that while this guideline works for television and movies, it might not work as well for other forms of arts and entertainment, particularly forms without dialogue like dance.
• Don’t Describe Over Dialogue: If you are gathering most of your story and emotional information from what the performers say, making sure that the dialogue can be heard clearly is very important! However, it can be argued that in live performances where the gaps in verbal communication are more variable than in pre-recorded material like television and movies, this guideline becomes very difficult to follow.
• Audio Description Suits the Audience: When we develop audio description, the age of the audience is important to consider. Audio description meant for young children should not use idioms or vocabulary that children don’t know yet; the point of audio description is to help clarify the art or media being presented, not create more questions. Reading level guidelines can be helpful when developing audio description for different age groups.
• Identify Characters Carefully: Characters should always have their names and pronouns used consistently throughout the presentation, and if there are two or more characters that use the same pronouns in a specific scene, make sure you use names when describing them. There are many differing opinions about how to describe characters’ appearances. Some groups think it is important to state race, gender, and age when describing every character. Other groups think that it’s only important to emphasize this information if it is vital information for understanding the story. There is also the potential problem of an audio describer making an inaccurate guess about a character or performer’s race, gender, or age. Many audio describers greatly prefer when performers state explicitly how they prefer to be described.
• Neutral Tone: According to the guidelines developed to support television and movies, the audio describer should use a neutral tone of voice and not express emotion. This makes sense if the voices of the performers are expressing that emotion. However, it can be argued that this guideline makes almost no sense when describing dance and other arts and media that don’t include spoken language. Radio broadcasts of sporting events have existed for nearly a century, and nobody would ever expect a sports announcer to use a neutral tone of voice. If anything, the tone of voice used to describe dance and sports should truly capture the emotional energy of the moment.
• Know Your Subject: A lot of audio description being made today, whether for pre-recorded media like television or movies, or for live arts, fails this guideline. It is very common for audio description to be an afterthought, something considered at the very last possible second, and audio describers are often called upon to describe something about which they know very little. An audio describer called at the last moment to describe a play will have a much harder time giving an accurate, helpful, artistically valuable description than an audio describer who has been able to have a conversation with the playwright, the director, the performers, and who has been working through rehearsals actively in order to get a deep understanding of the play. An audio describer that usually works creating scripts for television programs might feel very unprepared to describe a live ballet performance, and vice versa. Audio description is not like ASL interpretation, in which a one-to-one language translation is going on. Audio describers should have a solid knowledge of the art or media that they are describing, and should have opportunities to communicate with the creators of the art and media. The best time to contact an audio describer is the first day of planning the arts or media project.

Types of Audio Description

Open audio description: Open audio description is audio description that the entire audience can hear. Using audio description that every single person will hear, not just the blind and visually impaired people, is a great quality control. Another advantage to open audio description is that the volume of the audio description can be in good balance with the rest of the audio of the performance, like the volume of the music or the sounds of the dancers moving. 

Closed-circuit radio headset audio description: This is audio description that is broadcast to individual headsets during the performance live in a booth or pre-recorded. In this circumstance, the audio description is available by request. 

App-based audio description: Some arts and entertainment presenters prefer to have audience members download phone apps to access audio description. Not every blind or visually impaired person has a smartphone or are comfortable navigating a brand new phone app on the fly. Most modern smartphones don’t have great amplification for people who are hard of hearing. 

“Whisper AD”: This is when the audio describer is physically proximate to the blind and visually impaired audience, and has to whisper description. For online events, the equivalent to whisper AD would be a conference phone line that the blind and visually impaired people can call into and listen to the audio describer in one ear, while the other ear listens to the online event. Sometimes a person might prefer to listen to the whisper AD of an audio describer that knows them well over the audio description offered by the arts presenter if it is of low quality.

Multiplicities of Audio Description

Audio description should be flexible and appropriate for the art or media being described. When we develop audio description, we should keep in mind the emotional and intellectual engagement we hope the experience will provide. Will this audio description help convey the emotions, story, and culture of this performance to the audience? Will everyone in the audience be given the same opportunity to share these experiences? 

Since audio description is the way in which blind and visually impaired people experience art, audio describers are artists themselves, truly channeling and interpreting art using language and voice. Audio description has a high potential as an art form of its own.