AUDIO DESCRIPTION GUIDELINES and BEST PRACTICES

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND’S AUDIO DESCRIPTION PROJECT AUDIO DESCRIPTION GUIDELINES and BEST PRACTICES September 2010 – A Work In Progress Version 3.1 – Joel Snyder, Editor AD Logo "The American Council of the Blind, through its Audio Description Project, believes it is critical for knowledgeable users of description to establish these guidelines / best practices for audio description as it occurs in a broad range of formats: television/film/DVDs/downloads, performing arts, visual art and other areas. Only in this way can we be certain of receiving a consistent, high-quality product, developed in a professional environment.” Kim Charlson, Vice-President, American Council of the Blind Chair, Audio Description Project Committee August 2009 “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” - Letter by Mark Twain to George Bainton, October 15, 1888 1 AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND’S AUDIO DESCRIPTION PROJECT AUDIO DESCRIPTION GUIDELINES and BEST PRACTICES September 2010 – A Work In Progress Version 3.1 – Joel Snyder, Editor TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface …………………………………………………………………. Definitions ………………………………………... ………………… Core Skills .…………………………………………………………….. Performing Arts ..…………………………………………………... Theater ……………………………………….. Dance …………………………………………. Opera …………………………………………. Media……..………………………………………….......................... Visual Art / Exhibitions …………………………………………… 2 Appendix A – Storm Reading AD script excerpt / web link ………….. Appendix B – LMA “locomoting” vocabulary ……………………….. Appendix C – Dust AD script excerpt / web link ……………………… Appendix D – Color of Paradise AD script excerpt / web link ………. Appendix E – Equipment providers (“live” description) ………………… INDEX.…………………………………………………………………. 3 PREFACE These Guidelines/Best Practices have been gathered / developed and are an ongoing work-in-progress by the ACB‘s Audio Description Project chaired by ACB‘s Vice President Kim Charlson. The word ―gathered‖ is used since the work here is not, by and large, new: it is a ―review of the literature,‖ a culling of material that exists in documents that are widely available. Generally, those documents are not the result of scientific research. But they reflect and in turn these Guidelines/Best Practices are based on many years of experience with audio description in a wide range of contexts. The Guidelines/Best Practices are intended to be overarching in nature, i.e., they are written to apply to audio description generally no matter the subject being described or the particular format or genre in which description is used. There are, of course, significant differences in describing media as opposed to developing a tour for a museum exhibition. Consequently, we have developed sub-sets of these Guidelines/Best Practices that focus on Performing Arts, Media, and Visual Art. An initial draft of this document was reviewed by the public on a wikidot.org web page throughout June 2009 and was discussed in depth at the Audio Description Project Conference in Orlando, Florida, July 6-8, 2009. This version of these Guidelines/Best Practices was reviewed by a Guidelines Committee including Kim Charlson, ACB‘s Vice-President and Head Librarian, the Perkins School for the Blind; Fred Brack, webmaster, www.acb.org/adp;Thom Lohman formerly of the Described and Captioned Media Program; Rick Boggs of We See TV; Bryan Gould of WGBH; Lisa Helen 4 Hoffman, Audio-Description Consultant, Trainer and Patron of Audio-Description Services of LHH Consulting; Deborah Lewis, CEO, Arts Access Now, founding member, Audio Description Coalition; Nina Levent, Art Education for the Blind, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Christopher Gray, immediate past president of the American Council of the Blind; and Joel Snyder, Director, Audio Description Project) and will now be posted on the web for further input from anyone interested via a wikidot.org page. The committee will monitor and review all contributions and our goal is to have a final version made public by mid-2010. Finally, we want to credit with a large measure of appreciation the original source material on which this document is based. The material includes: - Art Education for the Blind‘s ―Making Visual Art Accessible to People Who Are Blind and Visually Impaired‖ - Audio Description Coalition Standards and Code of Conduct (the ADC Code of Conduct is reprinted, with permission, at the end of this document - ―Audio Description Techniques‖ by Joe Clark (Canada) - ―Audio Description: The Visual Made Verbal‖ by Joel Snyder from The Didactics of Audio Visual Translation, edited by Jorge Diaz Cintas, John Benjamins Publishing, London, England and on-line course for Fractured University 5 - Described and Captioned Media Program ―Description Key‖ (developed by DCMP and the American Foundation of the Blind) - ITC (Independent Television Commission) Guidance on Audio Description (U.K.) - National Captioning Institute Described Media ―Style Guide‖ 6 DEFINITIONS Audio Description (AD) Audio Description (AD) is a tool for people who are blind or have low vision that provides access to the visual aspects of theater, media, and visual art—and any activity where images are a critical element. Using words that are succinct, vivid, and imaginative, describers convey visual information that is either inaccessible or only partially accessible to a segment of the population. In addition, description may also benefit people who prefer to acquire information primarily by auditory means and those who are limited—by proximity or technology, for instance—to accessing audio of an event or production. The Audio Description User / Patron The principal patrons of audio description are people who happen to be blind or have low vision. Who are ―the blind‖? They are not "the blind." They are individuals -- housewives, scientists, artists, business people ... or, of course, any of us who happen to develop vision loss. People who listen to audio description are unique individuals living with some degree of vision loss as the result of a wide range of causes. Most at one point had all or some of their sight and now they may have only peripheral vision, they may see only shapes, light and dark, colors, movement, shadows, blurs, or ―blobs‖ -- or have "tunnel vision." Most users of description are not totally blind; indeed, only 1-2% of the legally blind are 7 congenitally blind (blind from birth); others are adventitiously blind or developed total blindness later in life. Only 10% know Braille. The American Foundation for the Blind reports that 25.2 million Americans have vision loss (i.e., have trouble seeing even with correction or are blind). While description was developed for people who are blind or visually impaired, many others may also benefit from description‘s concise, objective ―translation‖ of the key visual components of various art genres and social settings. Audio Description is an ―Assistive Technology‖; it is meant to enhance, not replace the user‘s own powers of observation. Audio Describer(s) / Describer (s) The person responsible for developing the description to be voiced. As Canadian writer Joe Clark makes clear, describers and voicers serve the audience and the production, not themselves. He explains: ―You‘re not providing descriptions to show off your vocabulary or to highlight your beautiful voice. You work for the production and the audience. A certain self-effacement is required.‖ Background in the medium or genre being described can also be helpful. Voicer (or Voice Talent) The person who voices the description (in some cases, often in the performing arts, the describer also is the voicer). The Consultant (s) 8 The Consultant is a person who is blind or visually impaired, an individual who has experience in the use of audio description, and who has the ability to analyze the descriptions. The Consultant‘s role is to ask questions and assist in the creation of descriptions so that a sufficient amount of information about the visual details is included in concise and accurate descriptions. The Consultant offers written suggestions for description delivery so that they flow and dovetail with any existing spoken portion of the subject being described. 9 CORE SKILLS This section is intended as an over-arching set of guidelines, applicable to audio description in whatever setting, genre or format it occurs. Later sections provide more specific techniques for the following areas: - Performing Arts (Theater, Dance, Opera) - Media - Visual Art / Exhibitions THE BASICS The audio describer is part journalist, faithfully relaying the facts: WHO Who is in the image? What do they look like? - Age One doesn‘t see someone‘s age unless the individual being described is wearing a button that proclaims, ―I‘m 60!‖ What does he/she look like? Those are the characteristics to cite, the things you see that prompt you to think that the individual is a certain age. In some description formats, of course, time is of the essence, and short- cuts include: In her late forties; in his sixties; pre-teen; teenage. - Hair/Build/Clothing Cropped brown hair; long blond hair; red-headed woman; slim; tall; stocky; dressed in a white pantsuit; wearing a blue floral dress; in a bright red sweater; the tuxedoed ―Bond.‖ 10 - Relationship Mother, father, son, brother-in-law, etc.—but take care to only specify if it is known. - Characters / People Describe individuals by using the most significant physical characteristics. Identify ethnicity/race as it is known and

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