VIDEO: Why Describe?

Audio Description is a narrative audio track that describes all essential visual information that is necessary to understanding the story and purpose of the video. To simplify, audio description makes it so that if you were to remove the visual component of your video entirely, your story would still make sense as solely an auditory experience.

This makes your content accessible to people who are blind and low vision who may not be able to see the video clearly. Remember, if your videos don’t have audio description, they probably aren’t accessible.

Audio description is often written by professionals who have experience and familiarity with the blind and low vision community. It can be tricky to craft good audio description and it is important to know exactly why and how people will be using it. We encourage all video makers to become proficient at creating their own audio description, but it’s important to make sure you are in communication with blind and low vision folks as you learn and begin to implement. Ask consumers to give you feedback, and if at all possible, include blind and low vision folks in the process.

• Here’s a great resource from American Council for the Blind and the Audio Description Project that provides some guidelines and best practices for audio describers.
• If you’re interested in hiring audio description services, The American Council for the Blind has compiled this list of audio description service providers.

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