Hello,
Our lab at Arizona State University is conducting a study to evaluate audio descriptions for a curated set of videos, and we’re looking for experienced audio describers to participate. This study will be held online via Zoom, taking approximately 90 minutes. Compensation of $50 will be provided for your time and expertise.
Eligibility Criteria:

• Must be 18 years or older
• No significant auditory or visual impairments
• Paid experience in creating audio descriptions
• Fluent in spoken and written English

If you meet these requirements and are interested, please apply via our Google Form. We’ll reach out to selected participants using the email address provided.
Thank you!

I'm 31 and a voice actor based in the UK, looking to increase my output (I have a background in radio, and I've narrated an audiobook in the past). I usually watch TV drama and films with audio description on, even though my eyesight is perfect - I don't think AD is just for blind or partially-sighted people necessarily; I just find I take things in better when they're described to me verbally more than when I'm just seeing it visually.

With my experience of voice acting and my knowledge of audio description from watching many programmes with it turned on, becoming an audio describer feels like it could be quite a good bet for my career going forward. But I can't find any information on how one goes about doing that, or even who it is doing it currently. I have voice demo reels and recordings of my voice, but no idea even who I'd send them to for this kind of thing!

Anyone have any knowledge of what I should do next? Preferably people based in the UK as that's where I am, although I have a home studio so can send recordings around the world if necessary.

Hi there! I’m playing with the idea of starting to watch anime. I’ve never watched any before so I really don’t know where to start. I see there’s a couple on Netflix, but they’re not really the ones I want to watch. I really want to watch Little slice of life cute anime.

So I was just wondering, before I start subscribing to Crunchyroll left and right, does any of its content come with audio description?

If not. How much of its contents are in English dub? I’m blind. So I need at least not gibberish lol.

Do you know if Crunchyroll through Prime Video is any cheaper? And is it easier to use with the built-in Alex screen reader on my fire cube? Or does it not have any screen reader at all?

A study on media accessibility is inviting regular users of audio description to provide feedback on various styles of audio description.

In this questionnaire, you'll watch six 2-minute clips, each representing a different genre of programming. After viewing each clip, you'll be asked four questions about the quality of the audio description provided. The survey will take approximately 20-25 minutes to complete.

We highly value the opinions of our viewers and regularly seek feedback.

Thank you for your time and participation.

Tim Robbins does something with his fist to show some excitement in Fraternity Vacation at 16.52-53:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocYULC_Ik-U

If I were to make an audio description on this how could I describe it.

Hi everyone! We are on a tight deadline unfortunately... but would love some creative (more poetic than traditional) audio description for a short documentary. This film will be exhibited soon in a gallery show and we hope to see it pushed out into festivals. Low budget but a unique project, we want it as accessible as possible.

Ever since I was 13, I found out about audio description. I became so fascinated with it, I watched a new show with audio description for the first time (That being the Season 1 of the Netflix series: “Hilda”, with it’s narrator being Veronika Hyks from BTI Studios) And I became in love with it so much, I pretty much used to watching movies or tv shows with AD. Am I weird for watching movies or tv shows with audio description, even though i’m not blind?

I've been watching TV & movies with audio description on since I discovered it. My partners finds it bonkers.

Any other ADHD AD fans out there?

Hi everyone! I was wondering if there are blogs/sites/channels that review or critique audio descriptions in shows or films.

One great example of this is the blog macthemovieguy.com. it's so great that i find myself checking it every day for a new entry in the small screen diaries.

I was wondering if there are similar ones? I just want to be able to browse through them before beginning a show.

Hi,

I've been doing AD for a few years now, and I've tried a few AD-specific programs (Cadet, Closed Caption Creator), but mostly I use Aegisub to draft my scripts. I sometimes use other programs to QC, if they're available.

What does everyone else use? Or do you just do spreadsheets/word/etc? I've been kind of operating in a vacuum for a number of years. o_O

So happy to check out this sub, though! :)

~M

Hello, just looking for examples (partial or whole) of AD scripts for theatre. Digital, or scans of marked up documents, either is fine. Anyone got any pointers or old scripts laying around?

Hi! I currently work for an organization that works with the Deaf and Blind community in my area. I have been tasked with finding a live audio description service for presentations and conferences. So far, I have found very limited services that can complete something like this live. I am only seeing LiveVoice, accessiBe, and Vitac, and these companies give barely any information on their services and procedure.

Any insight into where to look, what to look for, or any good companies/services would be greatly appreciated!! Sorry if this is not the subreddit to ask this, I am happy to direct my questions elsewhere. Thanks!!

Hello, everyone! I’m new here. I’m looking for online AD training for video (not for live events). There are two trainings of note in April but they are both on the same weekend that I can’t do.

Does anyone know of any others? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you!!

Hi!

What are your opinions related to the audio descriptions available for films which are very rich in information conveyed visually as well as very rich in voiceover narration, such as Anderson's movies? In these cases, it seems to me that an audiodescription would potentially be extremely detailed and long, but there is very little time to fit it in, and the voiceover narration does somewhat already convey the gist of what is happening. Do audio describers simply give up on conveying all the information, and let the voiceover do the talking so as not to overcrowd the experience?

For instance, in The French dispatch, a journalist narrates her account of a young man's death becoming a symbol for counter-culture throughout the world. While she says in a voiceover: "his likeness (mass-produced and shrink-wrap packaged) will be sold like bubblegum to the hero-inspired", a fast-paced montage of the character's picture appears, showing it first as a film reel, then as an advertisement for cigars (which the character is often seen smoking), then as the main picture of a newspaper article detailing how he died, and, finally, as a print on the t-shirt of a young adolescent playing with his friends. Both the montage and the voiceover are so beautiful and rich with interesting information that I would not know how to satisfactorily convey all of it: do existing audio descriptions do a good job in cases such as this? What approach would you prefer?

I'm really sorry if my post is worded in a confusing way or if I ask anything that is ignorant or offensive: English is not my first language and I know very little about this topic.

I'm writing a course paper on nonverbal elements of communication in audio description of comedy movies (I chose home alone). For that I need to attach the script of the movie and the transcript of the audio description. Does anyone know if there is a text version of the description available anywhere? I already have the audio file and I can transcribe it myself, but it would be so much faster if I had the text already made...

Big thanks to anyone in advance!

So when adding audio descriptions to a webinar, how do you describe a row of data in a data table? Is it just “the cell in row 5, column 1 (Name), contains “Jerry”. Or can I do “Row 5 reads left to right: (Name), “Jerry”?

I have vision issues but I’m not blind, so I’ve never thought to use audio description, I just happened to wander across it and it’s amazing!

I do other things when I’m watching tv, as such I do not watch a lot of action oriented movies, but with audio description it’s telling me the damn scene so I don’t have to stare at explosions, I can do other things…

These movies are terrible so maybe I’m just not into action movies, but I could follow the story as I stitched up the dog bed.

Hi all,

I'm currently writing some AD for a film from the early 1980s, where the main performers titles overlay the opening scene.

Fortunately it's a scene with minimal action, but it helps set the mood of the film.

My concern is that literally stating what is happening on screen will mean action description is awkwardly intercut with a name that doesn't relate to that action. Is it acceptable to instead, set the scene when there are no titles, read all of the titles as one short block, then focus on the action as it happens?

The film is Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, if anyone is familiar with it. It's a great one-room piece, adapted from a stage play. Very claustrophobic, hot, dusty, and with intense character focus. I think it will work well with AD in part because it doesn't need a huge amount, the story is character-driven, and the actors in it are excellent.

Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Apple, Disney Plus, and to an extent, Crave. All of these services technically offer audio descriptive content. But there's no telling if a service will include it. And unless there's an extremely good reason someone can illuminate, this needs to stop. Example: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among thieves was just released on netflix. without AD. I found it on SERO, which means it's described somewhere. That somewhere in this case is Apple TV. So why does Netflix, a company who is actually generally pretty good about audio description not have it? They even had audio description for Squid Game, a Korean series. Most foreign Netflix originals daine to include AD for only the original language track. While Squid Game did English. And that's another thing. It's fantastic that the original language has AD. There's almost none of that out there for non-english speakers. But I've lost track of how many Netflix originals have "Japanese" or "Korean" audio description, but not English.

This isn't just a rant, I genuinely want to know if I'm being unreasonable. It's out there, it exists. So why not include it whereever the movie/series is? And why not include English as well for content which is dubbed into that language?

Hello everyone, Are used in Google Bard to ask for a description and transcript of the following trailer for the flash. I would like to know would this be a viable starting point for a script for audio description for this trailer? The response I got from Google Bard is posted below: Sure, here is a transcript and description of what is going on in the movie trailer for "The Flash" from YouTube:

• The trailer opens with a shot of Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) running through a city, with a voiceover saying, "In a world where heroes are celebrated, one man will discover that even the fastest man alive can't outrun his past."
• We then see a montage of clips from the movie, including Barry fighting crime, Barry interacting with his friends and family, and Barry meeting with Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne.
• The trailer also features a brief appearance by Sasha Calle's Supergirl, and a voiceover from Barry saying, "I'm the Flash. I can run faster than the speed of light."
• The trailer ends with a shot of Barry running towards a dark figure, with the voiceover saying, "But when a new threat emerges, Barry will have to team up with his friends and family to save the world."

Here is a more detailed description of the scenes in the trailer:

• The first scene shows Barry Allen running through a city, with a voiceover saying, "In a world where heroes are celebrated, one man will discover that even the fastest man alive can't outrun his past." This scene is set in Central City, Barry's home city. We can see that Barry is wearing his Flash costume, and he is clearly moving at superhuman speed. The voiceover suggests that Barry is trying to escape from something, but we don't know what it is.
• The second scene shows Barry fighting crime. We see him running down a street, chasing a group of criminals. Barry quickly catches up to the criminals, and he easily takes them down. This scene shows that Barry is a skilled fighter, and that he is using his powers to protect the innocent.
• The third scene shows Barry interacting with his friends and family. We see him sitting at a table with his mother, Nora Allen (Michelle Pfeiffer), and his father, Henry Allen (Billy Crudup). Barry is also seen talking to his best friend, Iris West (Kiersey Clemons). These scenes show that Barry is a loving and caring person, and that he is surrounded by people who love and support him.
• The fourth scene shows Barry meeting with Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne. We see Barry and Bruce sitting in a coffee shop, talking about something. Bruce is wearing his Batman costume, which suggests that they are talking about crime fighting. This scene suggests that Barry and Bruce will be working together in the movie.
• The fifth scene features a brief appearance by Sasha Calle's Supergirl. We see Supergirl flying through the air, and she is wearing her Supergirl costume. This scene suggests that Supergirl will also be appearing in the movie.
• The sixth scene shows Barry running towards a dark figure. We can't see the dark figure's face, but we can see that it is wearing a red and black costume. This scene suggests that Barry will be facing a new threat in the movie.
• The seventh and final scene shows Barry running towards the camera, with the voiceover saying, "But when a new threat emerges, Barry will have to team up with his friends and family to save the world." This scene suggests that Barry will need to use all of his powers to save the world from the new threat.

Overall, the trailer for "The Flash" looks very exciting. It looks like the movie will be a mix of action, adventure, and drama. I'm looking forward to seeing how Barry Allen uses his powers to save the world.

I'm doing tech stuff for a small film festival and we want to have it be accessible as possible.

We are running some of the events at local cinemas that allow for using Digital Cinema Packages (DCP) which allows you to add a mono Audio Description track on Track 8 which is synced and gets streamed to infared headphones I believe (it's all handled from their end)

However we are also going to be doing some smaller events with a much more basic setup of essentially creating some .mov files with burned in CCs in a playlist and playing it with maybe VLC (or any video player it doesn't super matter)

The question I have is how would you set up an AD track with a setup doing that and have it be synced and only go to those who need it?

If anyone has any experience in this sort of thing please let me know!