About this episode

This episode discusses the importance and demand for audio description in media for blind and low vision viewers.

Quick question. What's the voice you hear describing what's happening on screen during a movie or a TV show for blind and low vision viewers? That's audio description. And somebody has to record it for every show, every movie, every piece of streaming content, every educational video on every major platform. Every single one. That is an enormous amount of work. And most voice actors have no idea how to get it. What Audio Description Actually Is AD is narration inserted into the natural pauses in a piece of video content, like dialogue, music, and sound effects, that describes what's happening visually. Character movements, facial expressions, scene changes, text on screen, important visual information that a viewer would otherwise miss if they can't see the picture. The narration is written in the present tense. It's delivered neutrally. The AD narrator describes. They don't editorialize. They are giving information logically but not characterizing it. And it has to fit precisely within the gaps in the existing audio, which means pacing is really important. The scripts are timed to the millisecond. The narrator has to hit very specific durations, sometimes very short ones, while…

People in this episode

Host: Peter Pamela Rose

Topics covered

• audio description
• voice acting
• streaming content
• accessibility
• narration skills

Keywords

• audio description
• voice actors
• streaming platforms
• narration
• accessibility

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Disney, Amazon, Apple, HBO

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