Live or recorded audio description (AD) is increasingly available as an assistive supplement to film, television and the performing and visual arts. AD is a form of intermedial translation which provides visual information in non-visual ways. It is primarily intended for blind and partially blind beholders (although I argue that it can have benefits for everyone). Whilst much important work exists on the value and use of AD as an inclusive assistive technology, little scholarly attention has thus far been paid to the ethics of the language choices made by audio describers. Current guidelines, where they exist, encourage audio describers to “say what they see” in order to produce objective and neutral description. Yet we know that language is never neutral. Every language act implies a choice, or set of choices on the part of the describer, and these choices, which often reveal hitherto unacknowledged value judgements on the part of the describer, will inevitably influence the beholder’s understanding of the thing described. This paper will draw on research conducted as part of the 2019 “Describing Diversity” project to ask how human characteristics, including race, ethnicity, body shape, disability and gender can be evoked in ethical and equitable ways. By exploring what is at stake in the description of normative and non-normative bodies, we will attempt to define what “ethical audio description” might look like, and investigate how this new kind of social-justice-inspired access model can and should work to foreground the paradoxical invisibility of unmarked normativities such as whiteness and non-disability.
This presentation starts from 21 secs to 21 mins 11secs.
Presenter
Hannah Thompson is a partially blind academic and activist. She is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK where she specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature and the visual arts, translation studies and audio description.
Hannah is currently one of 10 AHRC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fellows, and is working on creative audio description in museums, art galleries and theatres. She writes about her experiences as a partially blind person in a resolutely visual world on her blog Blind Spot.
