ABSTRACT
Audio description (AD) is a form of assistive audiovisual translation, or inclusion service, designed to make (audio)visual products available to blind and visually impaired persons (VIPs). AD offers people who cannot see what others take for granted. Also known as ‘video description’, ‘described video’ (Piety 2004), and ‘audio captions’ (Snyder 2014), AD is a unique form of communication that captures and translates the visual elements of a source text into spoken words. When present, e.g. in audiovisual texts, these words combine—and yet do not interfere—with the existing auditory ensemble (consisting of dialogues, sounds, music, noise, silence, etc.) to form a new coherent text. AD enables VIPs to access, understand better and appreciate more fully products that are conceived primarily as visual, such as paintings or films. Therefore, it has an important social impact enabling VIPs to integrate in the cultural and social life they are embedded in.
