Audio Description & Accessibility
Projects
Our research group is currently conducting research within three projects ”How the blind audience receive and experience audio descriptions of visual events” and “Audio description and accessible information”. Our research group is also engaged in the thematic collaborative initiative ”Audio description and image description for accessibility and social inclusion” (ADACOM).
Current research projects
How the Blind Audience Receive and Experience Audio Descriptions of Visual Events (FORTE) [2019 – 2023]
A three-year interdisciplinary research project funded by FORTE (Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare)
Project members
Researchers: Jana Holsanova, Roger Johansson, Viveka Lyberg Åhlander.
Project assistants: Erika Sombeck, Tina Rastegar, Linn Petersdotter.
About the project
The theoretical aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the principles that underlie successful communication between the sighted and the blind via audio description (AD). The aim of a series of experiments is to identify similarities and differences in how the sighted and the blind understand, segment and experience visual, spatial as well as temporal properties of an event. The project also includes workshops with researchers, practitioners of AD, interest organizations and blind users of AD. The applied goal is to increase the quality of AD and to support the training of audio describers and AD practices, and ultimately facilitate the understanding and accessibility of visual information for the visually impaired.
Keywords
audio description; cognition; communication; visual, spatial and temporal properties of events; voice quality; understanding and enjoyment of film; sighted and blind audiences; event segmentation
Audio description and accessible information (AUDEA) [2021 – now]
(Syntolkning och tillgänglig information)
Financed by Lund university.
Project members Researchers: Jana Holsanova, Roger Johansson, Johan Mårtensson, Diederick Niehorster, and Maja Rudling (Post-doc).
About the project
The project is a four-year interdisciplinary collaboration project on audio description and accessible information funded by Lund university. The theoretical aim of the project is to gain a greater understanding of how informative messages in the form of images, films and videos are made accessible for a blind and visually impaired audience. Understanding how informative messages are received will help gain insight into how these messages can be constructed in order for blind and visually impaired audiences to have access to the same important informative content. The research aim is also linked to the EU-directive and Swedish DOS-act about accessible video. The project gathers both researchers and people from our collaborative initiative (MTM, SPSM, SRF, Syntolksutbildning Region Örebro län) as well as partners from the business sector.
The research project has three sub-goals:
- Interdisciplinary research on how sighted and blind people process information from information films and how blind people understand and experience audio description (AD) of visual scenes in information films.
- Development and testing of research-based guidelines for the language- and genre-specific AD of information films.
- Development and testing of a digital tool that supports AD of information films.
Keywords
audio description; cognition; communication; understanding of informative messages; sighted and blind audiences
Thematic collaborative initiative (ADACOM) [2019 – now]
“Audio description for accessible communication and social inclusion” (ADACOM). Read more about the thematic collaborative initiative under the tab Networks.