Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. An unconventional approach to describing Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

Without access to audio description, individuals who are visually impaired (that is, are blind or have low vision) may be at a unique social disadvantage because they are unable to participate fully in a culture that is based on and heavily saturated by the enjoyment of audiovisual entertainments. Audio description was introduced as an adaptive "after-the-fact" strategy to give individuals who are visually impaired better access to entertainment media. With audio description, visually important elements of the "entertainment experience" are described during pauses in the dialogue. The authors believe that audio description is a creative process, and have learned first-hand how cognitively demanding live description is on a describer. They recognize that audio describers are generally volunteers and have a genuine interest in making the theater accessible to individuals with visual impairments. In this article, the authors present a summary of conventional and alternative audio description practices. They discuss a case account of an alternative audio description strategy that was prepared for a live production of "Hamlet" using the subjective, emotional style proposed by Fels, Udo, Diamond, and Diamond (2006) and Fels, Udo, Ting et al. (2006); and used by Udo and Fels (in press).