May 7, 2026 - 12:41
If you wish, respond to one of the articles about the concept and practice of audio description. How might audio description enhance both blind and sighted audience members' experience of an image, film, or performance? How can we imagine audio description as an art form?
Although I didn't post about this question at the time of the reading, I was thinking about it while completing finals work. I was re-listening/watching a movie for another course, and when I was listening for certain audio, it was requiring a lot of effort to find what I was looking for without captions. I am a consistent caption-user when watching movies and tv shows, and I have never spent much time thinking about this (why captions exist, how much they help, etc). I also have explored using audio books alongside physical readings this year, and have found that it's really useful for attention, I am not someone who can really gain information/learn easily from audio. Spending time thinking about audio descriptions and written descriptions in the context of disability access really made me think some of my personal experiences with learning, and reflect on how much I have benefitted from learing where mutliple modes of communication are provided.
Something that really stood out to me from the readings about this were the way that color/texture were described from visual art to low-vision or blind people. In particular, finding ways to describe a color that maybe someone has never seen really pushed me to think about this different ways in which we can convey similar information (and what simply can't be communicated). Writing this post after having worked on the wall text and audio descriptions for the CCW exhibit also made me reflect on the practice of providing this access for others. For example, it was suggested in class that we should use two words to describe colors in the art work we were writing/recording descriptions for (i.e., a saucy red). I actually found this kind of difficult, but it also made me stop to consider how I was describing other aspects of the artwork, and what might actually be informative or interesting.