What are Audio Descriptions? 

Audio descriptions are separate tracks that narrate descriptions of the visual components of a video. For people who are blind, visually impaired, or have cognitive differences, this narration helps to include the important visual elements to fully understand the video. Videos are full of visual information, so for the users who can’t see the video the experience of listening to visual material can be very confusing and frustrating.

Audio description is like alternative text for video. Audio description provides a narrative explanation of visual or non-verbal information, on a secondary track. These narratives and descriptions provide valuable information that users need to understand the meaning of visual texts. 

How to Include Descriptions from the Start 

Since Audio Descriptions exist on a secondary track, it can be challenging to include the descriptions once a video is complete.  

• Include descriptions along with your narrations
• When creating a script for a recording or video, plan ahead and build the narration directly into the script.
• If recording a lecture video, describe what you are doing and seeing as you lecture.
• Speak in complete sentence using clear and concise language, which helps the accuracy of auto-generated captions.

Benefits of Audio Description

Audio description can help individuals with low vision or blindness. These narratives/descriptions provide essential information that these users can't otherwise access or understand. Audio descriptions help in a variety of scenarios, including: 

• As with all accessibility strategies, audio descriptions can also help users listening to content
• Users looking away from screens to write notes while listening
• Students seated in the back of lecture halls
• Passengers in vehicles who can't look at visual information but who can listen to it being read aloud
• Learners who benefit from seeing and hearing at the same time
• Content creators, highlighting and explaining visual aspects of a video that might otherwise be missed or misunderstood
• Learners with multiple disabilities and abilities to change

Adding audio descriptions is another example of creating and designing content with Universal Design for Learning in mind, so all learners have equitable opportunities to be successful. 

Alternatives to Audio Description