scholarly journals Enhancing Audio Description: Inclusive Cinematic Experiences Through Sound Design

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Lopez ◽  
Gavin Kearney ◽  
Krisztian Hofstadter
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
3D Audio ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

This paper explores the creation of an alternative to traditional Audio Description for visually impaired film and television audiences. The Enhanced Audio Description (EAD) methods utilise sound design as the main vehicle for accessibility and advocate for the integration of accessibility practices to filmmaking workflows.  Moreover, this integrated strategy results in an organic form of accessibility that can cater for both visually impaired and sighted audiences, championing inclusive cinematic experiences.  The present article reflects on the discussions held during focus groups in which mixed audiences of visually impaired and sighted people watched the same film, with the same EAD soundtrack over headphones.  The discussions highlight the potential of the format as an example of universal design and accessible filmmaking, which can be enjoyed regardless of audience’s sight condition and can be offered alongside traditional Audio Description (AD) in order to cater for different aesthetic preferences. Lay summary Audio Description (AD) is a third person commentary added to film and television productions to make them accessible for visually impaired audiences.  Traditionally, AD is added to productions after they have been completed, meaning that the creative and accessibility teams do not work together to produce the accessible version of the production.  This paper explores an alternative to traditional AD, called Enhanced Audio Description (EAD), whose methods are integrated to filmmaking workflows.  EAD moves away from a focus on verbal descriptions and instead focuses on sound design strategies.  In EAD the traditional third person commentary is replaced by the combination of three techniques.  The first is the addition of sound effects to provide information on actions, convey abstract scenes as well as indicate time, place, and the presence of characters. The second is the use of binaural audio (3D audio over headphones) to convey the position of characters and objects portrayed on the screen. Finally, first-person narration is used to portray feelings, gestures, colours as well as certain actions. The application of EAD methods results in a form of accessibility that can cater for both visually impaired and sighted audiences, championing inclusive cinematic experiences. Focus groups with audiences of visually impaired and sighted people demonstrated the potential of the format to be widely enjoyed, and to be offered alongside traditional Audio Description (AD) in order to provide accessible experiences which cater for different aesthetic preferences.

scholarly journals Seeing films through sound: Sound design, spatial audio, and accessibility for visually impaired audiences

2020 ◽  
pp. 026461962093593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Lopez ◽  
Gavin Kearney ◽  
Krisztián Hofstädter
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
End Users ◽  
Short Film ◽  
First Person ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Spatial Audio ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Audio Description

Enhancing Audio Description is a research project that explores how sound design, first-person narration, and binaural audio could be utilised to provide accessible versions of films for visually impaired audiences, presenting an alternative to current audio description (AD) practices. This article explores such techniques in the context of the redesign of the short film ‘Pearl’, by discussing the creative process as well as evaluating the feedback supplied by visually impaired audiences. The research presented in this article demonstrates that the methods proposed were as successful as traditional AD in terms of providing information, enjoyment, and accessibility to audiences, demonstrating that both practices can coexist and, as a result, cater for the different stylistic preferences of end users.

scholarly journals Tracking multimodal cohesion in Audio Description: Examples from a Dutch audio description corpus

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Reviers
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
Audiovisual Translation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Selection Of

One of the main questions addressed by multimodality research—the main conceptual framework for analysing audiovisual texts—is how the different modes of audiovisual texts combined—visual, verbal, aural—create supplementary meaning in texts, over and above the meanings conveyed by the individual constituents. Ensuring that this multimodal interaction or multimodal cohesion remains intact is a key challenge in the practice of audiovisual translation (AVT), and particularly in Audio Description (AD) for the blind and visually impaired. The present article therefore studies the functioning of multimodal cohesion in audio-described texts by analysing the types of interaction between descriptive units and sound effects in a selection of Dutch audio-described films and series. The article begins with a detailed description of the methodology which is based on multimodal transcription and concludes with an overview of the types of multimodal cohesive relations identified.

scholarly journals Creating an Authentic Experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Sarah Osolen ◽  
Leah Brochu
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Library Service ◽  
National Network ◽  
Narrative Story ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Walking Dead

While working as production assistants for the National Network of Equitable Library Service (NNELS), an organization that creates and shares accessible versions of books to people with print disabilities, we were tasked with a challenging request from a user: Could we make an accessible version of the comic book The Walking Dead? Audio description services are available to the visually impaired in a few different venues such as television, movies, and live theatre. Guidelines for the creation of these descriptive texts are available to potential creators, but in our case, we could find nothing that would help guide us to create a described comic book. While some people and organizations have created prose novelizations of comic books, these simply tell the story, and do not include the unique visual aspects of reading a comic book. We have found that it is possible to create a balanced description that combines the visual grammar of a comic with the narrative story. In addition to creating a described comic book, we are developing guiding documentation that will be a necessary tool to ensure that visually impaired readers have a comic book experience (CBE) that (a) closely matches the CBE of a sighted reader, and (b) is standardized across producers, so that the onus of understanding the approach to comic book description (CBD) is not put on the visually impaired reader. At this point in our work, we need more feedback from users with print disabilities to ensure we are meeting the highest standards.

Time to first relapse as an endpoint in multiple sclerosis clinical trials

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
MP Sormani ◽  
A Signori ◽  
P Siri ◽  
N De Stefano
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Sclerosis ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Primary Outcome ◽  
Model Fitting ◽  
Clinical Trial Design ◽  
Fixed Time ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Sample Sizes ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
First Relapse

Background: The increasing number of effective therapies to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) raises ethical concerns for the use of placebo in clinical trials, suggesting that new clinical trial design strategies are needed. Objectives: To evaluate time to first relapse as an endpoint for MS clinical trials. Methods: A recently-developed model fitting the distribution of time to first relapse in MS was used for simulations estimating the sample sizes of trials using this as an outcome, and for comparison with the size of trials using the annualized relapse rate (ARR) as the primary outcome. Results: Trials based on time to first relapse were feasible, requiring sample sizes that were similar or even smaller than if the study was based on ARR instead. In the case of low ARR (0.4 relapses/year), as is expected in future trials, the 1-year trials designed to detect a treatment effect of 30%, with 90% power, require fewer patients when based on time to first relapse (470 patients/arm) than if based on ARR (540 patients/arm). Conclusions: Our simulations show that time to first relapse is not less powerful than ARR in MS trials; thus, this measure would be a potentially useful primary outcome offering the advantage of an ethically sound design, as the patients randomized to placebo can then switch to the active drug, once they relapse. A potential drawback is the loss of information for other endpoints collected at fixed time points.

Music versus Sound Design

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
Noah Kellman
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Elements ◽  
Different Levels

Each video game has its own unique, visual aesthetic, and it’s up to the composer to complement this visual world by creating a sonic atmosphere. Many of the greatest games have incorporated musical elements into their sound effects and ambiences. As the field of game music continues to grow, so does the importance of sound design as part of the composer’s skill set. This chapter explores how music and sound effects have interacted throughout the history of game music, defining these relationships for the reader in understandable terms with clear distinctions and accessible examples. This chapter explores FEZ (2012) as an example, along with a variety of other examples in which the music and sound effects were conceived with different levels of interconnectivity.

Performing Fragility

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Milena Droumeva
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Sound Effects

This chapter argues that the vocal performance of Lara Croft’s character in Tomb Raider 2013 manifests a particular type of media femininity requiring her fear and fragility and contrasts with similar games featuring male leads. Extending the discussion of the male gaze to sound brings new insight to the relationships between a character’s look, her movements and mechanics, and her vocalizations, to embody the character’s gender or act as gendered corporeality. The chapter argues that by virtue of being sound “effects,” women’s voices and feminized sounds in games draw on and solidify some of the most deeply entrenched gendered norms of sound design and voice-over work. Lara Croft’s excessive breathiness, as well as the overuse of environmental reverberation, codes her gendered sonic position as “feminized.” Players experience Lara Croft’s vocalizations as coded with abundant emotionality and fragility—sounds of strain, inner monologue, gasps, reactions, and battle cries—especially when compared with a similar narrative and game character, Nathan Drake, from the Uncharted series. By comparing the gendered sonic positioning of Lara and Nathan, the chapter shows her embodied vocal fragility by linking these characteristics to a transmedia historiography of feminized vocal typologies.

Improving an App for Visually Impaired Travelers

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Sebastian Molinillo ◽  
Francisco J. Liébana-Cabanillas ◽  
Diego Gómez-Carmona ◽  
Miguel Ruiz-Montañez
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Visual Impairments ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Transportation Company

Some public transportation companies have begun to develop mobile applications that facilitate the accessibility to their services for people with visual impairments. Nevertheless, despite their importance, up until now, very few studies have analyzed the particular characteristics and needs of this segment of the population in order to adapt the design of and services provided by this type of application. The objective of this study is to understand how users interact with this technology. This research is based on an analysis of the application developed by the Malagueña Transportation Company (EMT). Given its exploratory nature, a qualitative methodology was used based on focus groups with the participation of experts and users. The results allow the authors to learn about users' opinions, perceptions, and attitudes towards these applications, and to help guide strategies to improve their design and performance.

scholarly journals Improving the Audio Game–Playing Performances of People with Visual Impairments through Multimodal Training

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oana Bălan ◽  
Alin Moldoveanu ◽  
Florica Moldoveanu ◽  
Hunor Nagy ◽  
György Wersényi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sound Localization ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Visual Impairments ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Training Procedure ◽  
3D Audio ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Haptic Learning

Introduction As the number of people with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) is continuously increasing, rehabilitation and engineering researchers have identified the need to design sensory-substitution devices that would offer assistance and guidance to these people for performing navigational tasks. Auditory and haptic cues have been shown to be an effective approach towards creating a rich spatial representation of the environment, so they are considered for inclusion in the development of assistive tools that would enable people with visual impairments to acquire knowledge of the surrounding space in a way close to the visually based perception of sighted individuals. However, achieving efficiency through a sensory substitution device requires extensive training for visually impaired users to learn how to process the artificial auditory cues and convert them into spatial information. Methods Considering all the potential advantages game-based learning can provide, we propose a new method for training sound localization and virtual navigational skills of visually impaired people in a 3D audio game with hierarchical levels of difficulty. The training procedure is focused on a multimodal (auditory and haptic) learning approach in which the subjects have been asked to listen to 3D sounds while simultaneously perceiving a series of vibrations on a haptic headband that corresponds to the direction of the sound source in space. Results The results we obtained in a sound-localization experiment with 10 visually impaired people showed that the proposed training strategy resulted in significant improvements in auditory performance and navigation skills of the subjects, thus ensuring behavioral gains in the spatial perception of the environment.

Imagined spectators

Target ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol O’Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Change ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Television Production ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Home Entertainment ◽  
Automated Translation ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Research Questions

Abstract This article considers theoretical and methodological questions of language and translation policy in the dissemination of audiovisual products across languages. This is an area where scholarly research is inevitably playing catch-up with rapid change both in the language industries and in film and television production. For example, we have a general sense of ‘dubbing territories’ and ‘subtitling territories’ but in reality the picture is more complex. Norms changed in the course of the home entertainment revolution, with the arrival of the DVD format in the late 1990s ostensibly increasing viewer choice and flexibility of translation provision. The relocation of much audiovisual material to an online environment has also generated fundamental changes in the way that works circulate, with volunteer translators and automated translation processes playing a larger role. Policy developments in access translation have meant that there have also been great changes relatively recently in the availability of SDH subtitling, audio description and other modes of access translation. This is a very broad field which raises many compelling research questions. At the same time, its very breadth does not lend itself to a comprehensive overview. The article will therefore aim to provide an orientation to, rather than a summary of, the theoretical and methodological challenges of research on this topic.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document