Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which everybody else is laughing at a joke, but you just don’t get it? Those individuals who are blind or have other visual impairments go through this every time they watch a video like standard TV shows, informative videos, work videos, study lectures, visual product descriptions, or movies.
Here is when the audio description is useful.
What is Audio Description?
The supplementary audio track that defines and provides context for crucial visual information in media and live performances is known as an audio description, often referred to as a video description. This covers significant gestures, figures, scene transitions, and text that appears on the screen. Often, they are designed for blind or visually challenged consumers so that they may comprehend and appreciate the audio track.
For those who are blind or have vision problems, the audio description is a crucial accessibility tool because it enables these people to fully enjoy movies, TV serials, and other visual content by providing descriptions of the important visual details and components appearing on the screen.
Regardless of the visual material you’re producing, whether it’s a corporate training video, a live performance, or a Hollywood film, it’s crucial to ensure everyone can experience it and comprehend what’s occurring. An audio explanation might be useful in situations like those.
How are audio descriptions different from captions?
Audio descriptions (AD) walk the viewer through what they are seeing, whereas captions use text to describe important visual details of what is being seen on screen. To put it another way, captions assist people who are deaf or hard of hearing, whereas extended audio description assist people who are blind or visually impaired.
By adding textual transcripts, closed captions, and audio explanations, videos, and audio presentations may be made more accessible. There may be captions to offer a text equivalent to the audio in a video, film, television broadcast, live event, etc., with accompanying audio.
Furthermore, the same information that is supplied in the audio presentation, such as speaker identification and sound effects, is also provided in written form via the captions.
Types of Audio Descriptions
Three primary types of audio descriptions are used in this field to guarantee that everyone can enjoy your video content.
Standard
This makes it possible for narration snippets to appear at the organic dialogue breaks in the original content. To fit inside the given time during the break, these descriptions are often brief and to the point. By doing this, it is ensured that the audio complements the information rather than detracts from it.
When a modest amount of detail has to be conveyed or when there are many pauses in the text, standard audio description works effectively.
Extended
This extends descriptive narration well beyond the audio’s normal pauses. When a longer description is necessary, listeners can pause the original material and accommodate it. The explanation will start playing before the video does in order for this to function. Then, until the audio is finished, a little pause will occur in the video. The video will restart when that happens.
When longer details and important visual cues to content are required, an audio description is the best option.
Real-Time
Using a tiny transmitter and headphones, a skilled audio describer delivers narration or commentary to those who require it during a live event.
Real-time audio is the best option if you want an audio description for a live event like a play, a tour, or any live event.
The Benefits of Audio Descriptions
The benefits of audio description services are clear for persons who are unable to view visual material. Nonetheless, just as hearing people occasionally profit from closed-captioned online videos in circumstances when it is either not feasible or discouraged to listen to the audio track, so do sighted persons occasionally from audio descriptions connected with the video.
Including an extended audio descriptions in your movie or other visual material has a lot of advantages that you might not be aware of. Here are some advantages of audio description that will help you see how it might make your content more accessible:
Accessibility
We all process the available information in various ways. Some people learn visually, while others understand it better through auditory means. If you add audio descriptions in media, it will enable all customers who are blind or visually impaired to visual and entertaining material.
Children’s Linguistic Skills are Improved
Children can develop their language skills by listening to the audio descriptions. In order to help children improve their linguistic skills, audio descriptions can provide them with stimulation. Understanding the context and importance of words and expressions is important for language progression, and it may be done by listening to others.
The use of audio description can broaden children’s vocabulary while also assisting them in making connections between words and movements. Audio descriptions may be a useful tool for fostering language development and expanding vocabulary when kids start to associate words with certain actions and behaviors.
Provides Flexibility
Another advantage of audio descriptions is the freedom it gives people who want to consume films and other material without using or stressing their eyes. This implies that viewers may comprehend what is happening without being restricted to a single location.
This is getting more popular as individuals listen to movies and television episodes with the audio descriptions switched on, allowing them to experience its material in the same way they would an audiobook while cooking, driving, or performing other home activities.
Improves the viewing experience for autistic people
On-screen facial expressions and social cues may be challenging for autistic people to interpret. When reading these visual elements through narration, which they may find difficult to understand without audio transcriptions, people with autism can better understand them. They are now able to interpret information both visually and auditorily, and the audio track acts as an additional input channel to reinforce that.
Enhances Auditory Learning
Every one of us has a unique way of processing new information. Because the brain can process information either visually or orally, it’s common to hear people describe themselves as visual or auditory learners. Audio descriptions may be a useful tool for students who prefer auditory learning to help them remember new material in a classroom setting.
Hence, the addition of audio descriptions aids in the complete comprehension of the media by members of this group.
Development
Additional audio and visual description also help in the growth of two significant categories of people: individuals on the autistic spectrum and youngsters. People with autism commonly encounter that listening to audio explanations mixed with images helps them comprehend the emotional and social signs displayed via gestures and facial expressions.
Audio descriptions can help in detecting emotions that people with autism may find challenging to separate or understand due to the narration of visual elements within media.
Gets Rid of Perceptual Blindness
Most people don’t initially see the value of this. For those who are unfamiliar with it, perceptual blindness is a psychological condition that leads people to overlook objects despite the fact that they are directly in front of them, frequently as a result of being too or completely unfocused.
By highlighting on-screen items, audio descriptions can assist in combating perceptual blindness and ensure that viewers never miss important visual cues on screen text.
Helps in Avoiding Expensive Lawsuits
Disregarding audio description laws might result in expensive and time-consuming legal action. It is advisable to offer standard audio descriptions and explanations at all times to make sure you are complying with the accessibility rules.
Audio descriptions have a lot to offer the community as a whole, even if they were first created for accessibility reasons, like other tools. As a result, by adding video/audio explanations, you not only give the blind and visually impaired access to your web content and protect yourself from expensive litigation, but you also give your whole audience a lot of value.
Including Audio Description in your Content
The user may choose between two streams, along with the regular audio and the added audio explanation, using audio description tracks. Using audio descriptions in video content may be done in a variety of ways.
- The primary soundtrack of a video can incorporate audio explanations if the authors want. This eliminates the need for a second track, despite the fact that it can be difficult.
- Tracks for audio descriptions can easily be submitted as an additional track. Just the audio that is absolutely necessary to provide the pupil with the information they need can be on this track.
- There is also a possibility of creating and making accessible an audio explanation track that contains the whole content material.
Why Is Audio Description Vital for Increasing Engagement?
Visuals with extended audio description have a huge impact on how the visually impaired experience the information, which makes video accessibility to them one of the key factors in the need for audio descriptions to improve the content engagement of the blind. Among the reasons a video narration can be necessary are:
- It may be used as an instructional tool to help children expand their vocabulary.
- Similar to captions or video description, descriptions significantly increase the content’s accessibility.
- It makes users’ viewing more adaptable in environments with visual disturbances.
In order to make videos more accessible to those with impaired vision today, writing audio descriptions is a crucial prerequisite. A video description improves the television or media viewing experience for the blind, much like closed captioning helps the hearing impaired.
Conclusion
You must always provide an audio description with any visual media you produce, regardless of the kind. In the end, you want as many potential viewers as possible to appreciate how audio description enhance accessibility of your content and material, and to accomplish so, you need to take nearly every individual into account. Apart from the many advantages of having audio descriptions for your material, it’s likely that you’re breaching the law if you don’t have any.
Being a reputable audio visual and media localization company, DUBnSUB is dedicated to providing customers with excellent audio narratives. Whether your material is TV series, movies, study lectures, or commercial advertisements, we offer text and audio description services that are tailored to our client’s needs.