Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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I Create Audio Description -- How Can The Service Be Improved? #3 (self.Blind)
submitted by WadjetAD
A link is attached to an audio version of the post I’ve voiced for your convenience:
$1
Hello, my name’s John.
I create audio description for film, television and other visual media. By asking stylistic questions on this forum I hope to create a better audio description experience by understanding the wants, needs and frustrations of normal people who simply enjoy watching movies and television.
My question this week focuses on rate of speech.
Do you want narrators to talk faster? On my first post, quite a few people indicated a desire for audio description narrators to speak more quickly.
Through my experience in this field, I’ve developed the perception that some blind folks have hearing more attuned to faster rates of speech. It seems this ability is developed through the use of screen-reading softwares. From what I’ve seen, most people have them dialed up to incredible rates of speech. While I doubt this is true for older folks who might be less inclined to use computers and therefore screen-readers, I suspect it might be true of the younger non-sighted population. Is this generally an accurate perception and, if so, are there other reasons non-sighted people can generally process spoken language more quickly than sighted individuals?
For the rest of the post, I’ll assume this perception *is* accurate. We can train audio description narrators to speak incredibly quickly so that more detail could be fit into a scene. But would this be desirable?
To me, the issue comes out to this: What’s more important, the amount of detail provided or the seamlessness of the description? A describer who talks like an auctioneer would provide more details, but one with a slower more mellifluous voice might be less apparent or distracting.
Please let me know if you have further thoughts on this subject that I may have missed. Thank you and, as always, let me know what you think.
I will continue this series of fine-tuning questions to constantly improve audio description's quality and the audience's experience. If you have ideas to improve description's quality or want to point out conventions in description that bug the heck out of you, reach out and let me know -- you have a direct line to the source.
Thank you for enjoying film and television, and being a part of this community.
Sincerely,
John Gray
$1
Hello, my name’s John.
I create audio description for film, television and other visual media. By asking stylistic questions on this forum I hope to create a better audio description experience by understanding the wants, needs and frustrations of normal people who simply enjoy watching movies and television.
My question this week focuses on rate of speech.
Do you want narrators to talk faster? On my first post, quite a few people indicated a desire for audio description narrators to speak more quickly.
Through my experience in this field, I’ve developed the perception that some blind folks have hearing more attuned to faster rates of speech. It seems this ability is developed through the use of screen-reading softwares. From what I’ve seen, most people have them dialed up to incredible rates of speech. While I doubt this is true for older folks who might be less inclined to use computers and therefore screen-readers, I suspect it might be true of the younger non-sighted population. Is this generally an accurate perception and, if so, are there other reasons non-sighted people can generally process spoken language more quickly than sighted individuals?
For the rest of the post, I’ll assume this perception *is* accurate. We can train audio description narrators to speak incredibly quickly so that more detail could be fit into a scene. But would this be desirable?
To me, the issue comes out to this: What’s more important, the amount of detail provided or the seamlessness of the description? A describer who talks like an auctioneer would provide more details, but one with a slower more mellifluous voice might be less apparent or distracting.
Please let me know if you have further thoughts on this subject that I may have missed. Thank you and, as always, let me know what you think.
I will continue this series of fine-tuning questions to constantly improve audio description's quality and the audience's experience. If you have ideas to improve description's quality or want to point out conventions in description that bug the heck out of you, reach out and let me know -- you have a direct line to the source.
Thank you for enjoying film and television, and being a part of this community.
Sincerely,
John Gray
SightlessBastard 2 points 2y ago
I think, narration should be read the same pace, that people would normally talk in. I never had the impression, that the narrator was too slow. After all, if you would make your narrators to speak a naturally fast, you might as well use a TTS voice. And that would sound truly horrible.
ThisBlindChickReads 2 points 2y ago
My biggest annoyance is it sounding too robotic. Other than than that ... I think the feel of the movie should dictate the speed of the speech. Also, some conditions that cause blindness also cause slight hearing loss as well. If the entire description is read at a fast pace, there may be a larger portion of the blind community left out than intended.
[deleted] 1 points 2y ago
[deleted]
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