Enhanced audio description. Exploring first-person description in accessible film productions

Enhanced Audio Description (EAD) is an alternative to Audio Description (AD) for visually impaired film and television audiences. EAD aims to reduce the number of verbal descriptions by focusing on sound design as a vehicle for accessibility, through the combination of three main techniques. The first technique is the use of sound effects to provide information on actions, elicit the presence of establishing shots, convey abstract scenes as well as indicate time and place, and the presence of characters. The second is the utilisation of headphone-based binaural audio to convey the position of characters and objects portrayed on screen, through 3D audio spatialisation. The third is the addition of the I-voice (Chion 1999), a first-person narration employed to portray aspects of the story that cannot be conveyed through sound effects or 3D audio, such as gestures, colours and complex sets of actions. These methods allow for the reduction of verbal descriptions, which in traditional AD often mask crucial soundtrack elements (such as sound effects and music), while also providing a form of integrated access, in which accessibility is part of the film and television creative and technical workflows. EAD methods have been shown to provide experiences that are as accessible, informative and engaging as traditional AD, while also being acknowledged for their potential to foster social inclusion (López, Kearney and Hofstädter 2020a-b).

This research paper focuses on the I-voice or first-person description. The authors will explore the potential and challenges of using this method in a variety of film and television productions, including different genres and cast sizes. Past work by the authors demonstrated that the method was widely accepted and considered to provide a more poetic and organic take on accessibility (López, Kearney and Hofstädter 2020a-b). However, its implementation at the time was limited to examples of short student films with small cast sizes. The research presented in this paper originated in discussions with focus groups with visually impaired participants, in which the research team was encouraged to explore the expansion of the I-voice to other types of production to gauge its effectiveness and arrive at guidelines for implementation for the industry. As a result, a number of new examples were created in collaboration with industry partners. The process of creation as well as the results of a series of evaluation sessions with visually impaired participants will be presented. End-users and industry partners are key agents in this research process. While the former have been providing essential feedback on EAD strategies since the start of the project, the latter are central to the implementation needed for the EAD methods to reach wider audiences.