Audio description for people with intellectual disability

Abstract

Audio description (AD) has been studied and applied, primarily, to the visually impaired. Knowing that this form of audiovisual and intersemiotic translation can also be enjoyed by other publics, this article aimed to report the process of the reception research done with students from APAEs in Salvador and São Paulo that culminated in the master's thesis of the current researcher. The research was attended by twelve students from both institutions, seeking to identify comprehension gaps generated by the audio description script for visually impaired people when applied to people with intellectual disabilities. The reception study was done in order to collect data that could expose such gaps and thus to understand how an audio description script could be more effective for this new audience, based on the conception that audio description is a form of translation, which translates images into words. The interpretation generated during the process of transposition of meanings is intrinsic to the development of the activity, and the audio describer is a mediator between original and translation. Within this perspective, an interpretative audio description would be explicit, where the translation would be composed of clearer sentences, which would allow a greater degree of understanding, unlike descriptive audio description, which would be a more objective form of translation, leading the viewer to make inferences without the interference of the translator. The conclusions reached pointed out that for people with intellectual disabilities, a more interpretative AD script would be indicated, as this public tends to forget information easily and disperse it in moments of concentration. The use of lexical items of less complex conceptualization was also one of the conclusions found by the study. The repetition of information as a way of fixing it would be another point to take into account in a script for this new audience.