What Is Audio Description?

Audio description (AD) is narration used to convey visual information to audiences with low or no vision. It occurs between bits of dialogue in order to add relevant information that an audience member doesn’t receive visually. At its most basic, audio description essentially means an additional voice-over to help Blind audiences.

Audio description is a vital tool for accessibility, expanding options for vision-impaired audiences so they can engage with content more fully. Adding audio description is like turning a film or TV show into a radio play or immersive audiobook. But how does it differ from other accessibility measures? What does it take to actually carry out an audio-description project? And how can film buffs with vision impairment benefit from this work? Let’s dive in.

Is audio description the same as subtitles?

While both subtitles and audio description boost accessibility, they serve fundamentally different purposes. And subtitles are only one of many ways to expand audiovisual access, which also include dubbing. First, it’s important to point out that subtitles exist in a few different forms, depending on their use case.

Subtitles and SDH

Subtitles mainly refer to interlingual subtitles that allow audiences to understand content in another language. They could also refer to subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH), often called captions. These can appear in either the same language as the original audio track or a different language’s audio track. They display written information on the screen, including relevant sound cues and atmospheric descriptions of music and background noise. They also identify who’s speaking when this is not immediately apparent from what is shown visually.

Dubbing

Since subtitles require visual input to access, audio description perhaps has more in common with dubbing. Dubbing, like audio description, involves adding an audio track created after a film has been made. Dubbing is most frequently used to present a film in another language, though it also allows Blind audiences who speak a language other than that of the film’s original audio to engage with its content, since subtitles are not accessible to them. Check out my prior article if you’d like to learn more about subtitling versus dubbing.

Is audio description like subtitles for Blind people?

In effect, yes. Audio description is to Blind audiences what SDH is to Deaf viewers. It helps fill information gaps in a way that’s accessible to them. If you can hear the dialogue and sound cues but not see visuals, audio description presents these visuals in an auditory manner. This sample audio-description from Disney’s Frozen will give you an idea.

This process is far from the only way that translation and interpreting overlap with accessibility, and not just in terms of spoken language barriers. Think of a sign-language interpreter helping a Deaf person or an interlingual subtitle translator using SDH/captions as a starting point for their own work. Content creators of all kinds should think about how to incorporate digital accessibility into their work across the spectrum of potential barriers. But how can they do that for AD?

What goes into an audio-description project?

For a more detailed breakdown of the process of creating audio description and AD’s prevalence in society, I highly recommend this episode of the Hyperfixed podcast. The host helps a film aficionado check some entries off his watch list and learns a lot about audio description in the process. But if you don’t have 40 minutes to listen, here’s an overview.

Writing audio description

As a subtitle translator, audio description is very much adjacent to my own world. I do in fact have some audio-description writing credits under my belt and know that writing these scripts is a delicate balance of timing, prioritizing information, and putting yourself in the audience member’s shoes to provide the best possible film experience. Here are some considerations for writing audio description:

• Write in the present tense.
• Don’t describe camera movements (e.g., “camera pans to the left”) or even acknowledge there is a camera unless it’s part of the plot. This helps create a more immersive experience.
• Try to avoid revealing character names or surprises before that information has been provided via dialogue.
• Prioritize the information that is most important for understanding the story and plot.
• Use gender-inclusive language.

Audio description often has to convey a lot of information in very little time. Being a good AD writer means being a good watcher of films. Recognizing the visual cues provided by the director is key to rendering them textually and efficiently in the audio description for the end-user’s increased enjoyment of the film.

There are competing theories about the best way to handle elements like subjective descriptions of facial expressions or when to describe jump scares—before or after the scare? Different companies and distributors have their own preferences, and the consensus also varies geographically. For example, North American style guides place a lot of emphasis on objectivity, where other regions permit more editorializing. A U.S. audio describer might say “a man with a hook for a hand and a jagged scar across his eye leers at the heroine” and let the audience conclude that he has a sinister air, rather than saying, “a sinister man stares lustily at the heroine,” which includes more subjective conclusions.

Recording an audio description

Once the audio description script has been written, it has to become speech, and this is where voice actors come in. AD is best read by someone whose voice is distinctive enough from the characters’ voices to avoid confusion. In our modern age, AI is, of course, being used to read audio description, which is a double-edged sword. Automatic speech generation makes audio-description tracks faster to produce, which will hopefully inspire more filmmakers to include them. But AI can—and often does—sound like a robot, which can dampen the film experience.

Audio description track mixing

Finally, the recorded track must be mixed into the original audio. In order to hit volume specifications while also ensuring the AD is audible, mixers may have to make the original track slightly quieter under the description and bring it back up once the dialogue and soundscape resume. Mixing is its own art form that’s just as important as any other part of the process.

Where can I find movies with audio description?

The regulation landscape for audio description is not as robust as it is for captions and subtitles, but that’s starting to change now. The FCC introduced expanded AD requirements in 2020, projecting the continuation of the project through 2035. Major streamers like Amazon, Disney+ and Netflix now offer audio description for many of their titles. The American Council for the Blind’s Audio Description Project maintains a directory of films and series available with AD.

Many movie theater franchises, like AMC and Regal, also offer assistive headphone devices for select films in order to provide audio description in movie theaters.

Audio description: A Win for Accessibility

Audio description is one of many tools available to audiovisual (AV) creators to help expand access to their content. Beyond signaling that they care about all audiences, it’s a way to comply with the most current regulations and to ensure a project gets seen (and heard) by as many people as possible. By translating content and providing captions and audio descriptions, creators invite more people into their worlds and, at the same time, make everyone’s world more inclusive.

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