Accessibility means enabling equal participation in society, culture and communication by all people.
Audio Description: Access service and intermodal translation
Audio description means:
- the translation of images into words, sometimes involving collaboration between blind and sighted persons
- an audible spoken track embedded in a film, video, TV program, audio guide, etc.
- a descriptive text of visual information or representation
- an assistive service and a tool for blind and visually impaired people – and for anyone who cannot or does not want to watch
Follow the links below to get more information and samples of audio description in Finland:
in English:
- Audio describer Carita Lehtniemi presents her work
in Finnish:
- Näkövammaisten kulttuuripalvelu ry:n kuvailutulkkaussivut
- Kuvailutulkki auttaa ylittämään aistiesteitä (a report on Academy of Finland’s site)
- Suomalaisia klassikkomaalauksia kuvailutulkattuna Ateneumin kokoelmasta (the audio files below via SoundCloud)
- Kuvailutulkkausnäyte dokumenttielokuvasta Salainen metsäni (näytteen litteraatti alla):
(Tuotantoyhtiö: Double Back Documentaries, 2017; kuvailutulkkaus Pipsa Toikka, kuvailutulkkauskonsultti Riikka Hänninen)
Kertoja: Epätarkka vihreys, valopilkut täyttävät kuvan. Hohtavien pilkkujen seasta hahmottuu ohuita, alastomia kuusenoksia,vailla neulasia. Pirjo ja lauri seisovat metsässä, kuusen juurakon edessä, maassa keltaisia lehtiä. Pirjo ojentaa pientä kirjaintaulua, johon lauri kohti katsomatta naputtaa.
Pirjo: Ihanaa olla metsässä.
Lauri: Metsässä.
Kertoja: Salainen metsäni.
Why study audio description?
Audio description, involving communication in language, images, speech and sound as well as people with distinct perceptual capacities, furnishes a wealth of research issues and touches upon various fields of research. All of them are, moreover, socially relevant as they are geared towards increasing knowledge of human communication and interaction. In fact, by looking at this phenomenon which might seem marginal at first sight – serving “only” the few hundred million blind people in the world – will prove fundamental and therefore massive in its very basic question:
- How do people conceptualise and verbalise the non-verbal world, and therefore their ideas?
- How are moving and static images being transformed into words by people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds?
- What can the descriptions and the act of describing reveal about cognition?
- How can we reach a mutual understanding of something to which we have different perceptual access?
In this era of multimodal, audiovisual communication, translation is going beyond overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers and facing the issue of transforming information presented in one communication mode into another.