Audio descriptive guides in art museums. A corpus-based semantic analysis

Audio description is increasingly used by museums to improve access to their collections by visually impaired visitors. However, research in this field is still very limited. This paper aims to report on a descriptive study of artwork audio description as a modality of intersemiotic translation from images into words. A corpus comprising audio descriptive guides from art museums in the United Kingdom and the United States was compiled and analyzed following a corpus-based methodology. Existing audio descriptions of art museum exhibits were shown to comply with existing guidelines regarding the type of visual information conveyed, the level of detail offered, and the point of view used. These results are discussed in relation to the communication context to contribute to the discussion of current practices and their implications for visually impaired people’s access to visual art.