Audio Description: a practical application of multimodal studies
Audio Description (AD) can be briefly defined as the insertion of short verbal descriptions illustrating the essential visual elements of an audiovisual product (including films, television programmes, documentaries, advertisements, but also such audiovisual phenomena as art galleries, museums, dance performances, city tours, live events, etc.) principally for the blind and visually impaired community, most succinctly described by Snyder as “the visual made verbal” (2005, 15). In this provision of a verbal version of a visual text for the blind and sight-impaired, the principal focus of the audio describer is clearly on the non-verbal features of an audiovisual text. The dialogue remains unaltered while the describer attempts to provide the sensorially disabled with a clear rendering of the visual components. Faced with numerous temporal and spatial constraints, the describer generally has to identify the most salient items for the description. This task would clearly seem to require a certain knowledge of and a sensitivity towards what is now known as multimodal studies.
Multimodality or “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event” (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001:20) is not a new field of study in that everything is to some extent multimodal, but in the modern world, archetypal multimodal texts such as films, television programmes and websites, have greatly broadened the scope of such studies. These media are the also the main focus of audio description.
A European Lifelong Learning project (ADLAB: Audio Description - lifelong access for the blind) coordinated by the University of Trieste has, over the last three years, studied AD in depth and produced a set of strategic guidelines for the profession. This research has investigated the myriad ways multimodality impacts on the analysis of texts such as film and television products. Audio description involves the study of all the semiotic resources in a text and how they interact, providing a vehicle that, in addition to providing an essential tool in promoting the social inclusion of the blind community, makes a contribution to harnessing our understanding of multimodality.
Kress, Gunther and Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: the Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, London: Edward Arnold.
Snyder, Joel. 2005. “Audio Description. The visual made verbal across arts disciplines across the globe.” Translating Today 4: 15-17.
