Audio Description Awareness Day

Let’s talk #AudioDescription!

Editor’s Note:

The mission of Audio Description Awareness Day is to acknowledge, celebrate, and advocate for quality and excellence in all forms of audio description (AD). We recognize the power AD has to enable, employ, educate and entertain the 2.2 billion people worldwide* who live with some form of visual impairment.

So we’ve been followers of Perkins School for the Blind a nonprofit leader in education services for children and young adults with disabilities and visual impairments for quite some time. On their social platforms, they share some of the best content on disability inclusion. So we reached out to them and asked if we could share the following content related to audio description (AD) and they said YES!

Thank you Perkins School for the Blind for partnering with us to increase the importance of AD. We are so excited to work with you on advancing AD awareness.

Let’s talk #AudioDescription!

Republished with permission from Perkins School for the Blind

Let’s talk #AudioDescription! Best practices. Who it serves. Why it’s important. What makes great description and what makes… not so great description.

First off: what is it?

Simply, audio description (#AD) is voiceover narration that describes what’s seen in a piece of video content for a visually impaired audience. It focuses on what’s most critical to understanding images on a screen.

What AD is not:

It doesn’t step on dialogue or dwell on describing every single minor detail. It also doesn’t describe the intention, thought process or motivation of characters: that’s the story’s job.

Of course, description is an art, not a science.

And many viewers have different preferences in how they like things described. The important thing for description authors is to remember not to assume a #blind person needs you to hold their hand to understand a story.

As for why this is so important?

From #Hollywood filmmakers on down to social media content creators, AD allows you to reach a wider audience. It’s also plainly the right thing to do, to help give visually impaired people access to visual content!

And luckily, creators are realizing this! Streaming services like @netflix, @appletv, @disneyplus and others all have a fairly robust library of audio described content.

Of course, there’s work to be done. But there’s more AD now than there’s ever been, and good reason to be hopeful creators will only continue prioritizing and upping their game in this area of their work.

Now, what titles have some of the best AD you’ve encountered?

Connecting With Perkins School for the Blind:

• Website: perkins.org
• Instagram: @PerkinsVision
• Twitter: @PerkinsVision
• Facebook: @OfficialPerkins

Image Descriptions:

• Image 1: Graphic of headphones. Text: “Let’s talk AUDIO DESCRIPTION.”
• Image 2: Text: “What is AD? Voiceover narration that describes what’s seen in video content.” Graphic of ear listening.
• Image 3: Text: “What AD is not: Doesn’t step on dialogue or dwell on describing every single minor detail.” Graphic of laptop with person talking.
• Image 4: Text: “Why is AD important? It’s the right thing to do. AD makes content accessible for visually impaired people.” Graphic of person wearing headphones and hearts around the head.

*WHO Blindness & Vision Impairment Key Facts