This is unit 3B: Easy-to-understand and audio description.
Element 1: Processes.
Video Lecture: What is Easy-to-Understand art AD?
I am Elisa Perego, from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
In this video lecture I will define
audio descripition, focus on art AD,
and offer hints and examples on how to make it simpler.
The multimodal world we live in
has become more and more inclusive
for people with different abilities.
Screen products, exhibitions and static art forms
are no longer inaccessible to people with sight loss.
Audio description is a form of accessible, assistive,
and intersemiotic audiovisual translation, that
enables us to transfer the relevant visual elements of a text
into a verbal aural narrative.
Depending on what we audio describe,
the audio description can be more or less complex.
In art AD, texts are normally long.
Lexically, they are varied and dense.
They are precise and use specialized words.
They use many adjectives, like descriptors
which are very long as in:
“an extraordinarily luminous sulphur-lemon yellow”
used by audio describer Louise Fryer
to describe the background of Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers.
Syntaxwise, art ADs use longer sentences than screen ADs.
They use structures normally avoided
because considered unreadable.
For instance: passive voices, heavy subordination,
and embedded structures.
An example, from the AD of Van Gogh’s famous painting
shows what I mean.
I quote Fryer’s AD:
“The sunflowers are mostly grouped in threes
around a central flower facing us,
with swirling orange and brown middle,
energetic, sinuous golden brushstrokes
radiating from the top for petals
and similar pale green strokes at the bottom for sepals
where the petals have fallen off.”
Listening to such a complex description
can certainly put off some users.
To make information clear and easy to understand
follow some simple standards,
like those illustrated in the Inclusion Europe guidelines.
First, pick short sentences
and don't overload them
with unnecessary syntactic components.
Subject (S) verb (V) object (O) might just be enough.
Focus on salient words, use high-frequency and common items.
Do not elaborate on adjectives
and pick one-word attributive inherent ones,
which denote clearly the quality of the noun.
Let’s focus on the Sunflower example.
A way to go when adapting or translating an existing text
is highlighting salient and necessary items.
You can see them emboldened on the slide.
I selected:
orange and brown middle,
energetic,
golden brushstrokes,
petals,
pale green,
sepals.
I decided to avoid words like:
mostly,
swirling,
sinuous,
radiating.
Reformulate difficult words and use common items,
or even longer but less technical reformulations.
So, brushstrokes can become
"the marks of the brush made by the painter".
The sepals are:
"the outer part of a flower that surround the petals".
So, the description can become:
"The sunflowers are grouped in threes.
The sunflowers group around a central flower.
The central flower faces us.
Its middle part is orange and brown.
The petals are golden.
Some petals have fallen off.
The outer part of the flowers is pale green.
The style of the painter is unique.
The marks of the brush are lively."
Once your E2U AD is ready,
don't forget to consider its listenability.
This is the ease with which a material is listened to,
understood,
and enjoyed.
Remember: readability and listenability are different concepts
and they might not overlap.
Since your text cannot be re-read,
make sure the message is
"instantly intelligible",
stimulating and attention grabbing.
Take an audience-centred perspective
when you audio describe.
To produce a listenable text
use an oral-based style,
do not read too fast,
and convey engagement.
Select an appropriate voice for aural reproduction,
calibrate the volume and the quality of the recording,
and adjust the rate of delivery.
I hope these recommendations were useful.
It is up to you now to find more ways to write
or adapt art ADs,
integrating E2U and listenability principles.
The picture of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers/
comes from Wikimedia Commons,
a collection of more than 64 million freely usable media files.
It was published by Diego Delso,
under the Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
All the other pictures
come from the Public Domain Vectors website,
which gathers royalty-free vector images
under the Creative Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication license.
This video lecture was prepared by Elisa Perego
and produced by Martina Atzeri
from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
You can reach me at eperego@units.it.