The Preferred User: How Audio Description could Change Understandings of Australian Television Audiences and Media Technology

Abstract

Audio description continues to be unavailable on broadcast television in Australia, despite the technological capabilities to provide it and the existence of a federally funded back catalogue or 'secret library' of audio described television content. This paper reveals findings into both the amount of audio described content that has been created but not made available to television audiences, while also reviewing existing innovative platforms for audio description, such as the app BAM-Describe. It contextualises these findings in an overview of the history of audio description in and outside of Australia, highlighting key technological and policy changes. Evoking theories of the preferred user and how this understanding of television audiences addresses disability, we argue that different interpretations of how audio description can be delivered, determined through a process of interpretive flexibility (and continued industry creativity and innovation) may finally shift the stagnating discussions around audio description provision, and thus ultimately change the accessibility of television for the blind and vision impaired.

The Light Bulb Went on: A Historiography-Based Approach to Disentangling Audio Description’s Influential U.S. Roots From Its Common Practices

“…But, only in the past decade or so, scholars in this field also have begun raising significant questions about the external validity of the field’s widespread and mostly ad-hoc practices. Books, edited collections, and academic articles about audio description (Ellis et al, 2018; Fryer, 2016; Kleege, 2016; Maszerowska et al, 2014; Matamala & Orero, 2016; Perego, 2018; Snyder, 2014), including manuscripts in this journal (Branje & Fels, 2012; Packer et al, 2015; Rockwell & Boris, 1982) have recounted its rich practitioner history, especially in the latter 20th century in the United States, when most contemporary guidelines were being conceptualized, developed, and informally codified. That era energized a flurry of like-minded initiatives establishing audio description globally in popular entertainment, including film, television, and theater.…”