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The American Council of the Blind (ACB) Recipient of the 2022 Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl Audio Description Achievement Award for Research and Development
This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the expanding field of audio description, the practice of rendering the visual elements of a multimodal product such as a film, painting, or live performance in the spoken mode, for the benefit principally of the blind and visually impaired community. This volume brings together scholars, researchers, practitioners and service providers, such as broadcasters from all over the world, to cover as thoroughly as possible all the theoretical and practical aspects of this discipline.
In 38 chapters, the expert authors chart how the discipline has become established both as an important professional service and as a valid academic subject, how it has evolved and how it has come to play such an important role in media accessibility. From the early history of the subject through to the challenges represented by ever-changing technology, the Handbook covers the approaches and methodologies adopted to analyse the "multimodal" text in the constant search for the optimum selection of the elements to describe.
This is the essential guide and companion for advanced students, researchers and audio description professionals within the more general spheres of translation studies and media accessibility.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
- The question of accessibility
- Access services for the blind and partially sighted: a social and legal framework for the promotion of audio description
- A profile of audio description end-users: linguistic needs and inclusivity
- A cognitive approach to audio description: production and reception processes
- Narratology and/in audio description
- Linguistic and textual aspects of audio description
- Audio description and culture specific elements
- "Ut pictura poesis": the rendering of an aesthetic artistic image in form and content
- Audio description for the theatre: a research-based practice
- Opera and dance audio description
- Audio description for the screen
- Museum audio description: the role of ADLAB PRO
- Audio description in museums: a service provider perspective
- Visitor studies: the impact of inclusive museum audio description experiences
- Audio describing churches: in search of a template
- The audio description professional: a sociological overview and new training perspectives
- Audio description: a public broadcaster's core business and headache
- Profiling audio description service providers: a questionnaire-based snapshot
- Research in audio description
- Audio Description Software
- Receptor Tools
- Artificial Voices
- Video games and audio description
- Automating audio description
- Audio description personalisation
- Audio introductions
- Audio subtitling
- Audio description translation: a retrospective
- Audio description translation: a pilot study Chinese/Spanish
- Audio description for the non-blind
- University training
- In-house training: the course at Bayerischer Rundfunk
- Audio description in the United States
- Audio description in Canada
- Audio description in Australia
- Audio description in Russia
- Audio description in Brazil
- Audio description in Slovenia
Index
About the author
Christopher Taylor is Full Professor (retired) of English Language and Translation at the University of Trieste, Italy. He is author of
Language to Language (CUP, 2000) and more than eighty articles on general translation, audiovisual translation and audio description.
Elisa Perego is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Trieste, Italy. She is author of
Accessible communication: A cross-country journey, and numerous articles on audiovisual translation, audio description, and language simplification.
Summary
This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the expanding field of Audio Description, the practice of rendering the visual elements of a multimodal product. This is the essential guide and companion for advanced students, researchers and Audio Description professionals within translation studies and media accessibility.
Report
"Spanning the breadth of audio-descriptive applications, this rich compendium shows that AD has finally come of age and is no longer the Cinderella of AVT. This book will be invaluable to anyone interested in accessibility, particularly researchers in AVT."
Dr Louise Fryer, audio describer and independent researcher
