Audio Description -- The Early Development

How can a blind or visually impaired person enjoy the theatre? Or movies, television, and other audiovisual productions? How can visual experiences effectively be made verbal? Gregory Frazier, founder of AudioVision, was a key figure in the early development of audio description for persons with a visual impairment. Watch this historical treasure, introduced by Margaret Hardy, and learn from Emmy Award winner Frazier, a pioneer in the field.

Dr. Frazier describes audio description as, "The art of describing media and the arts for people with low vision or no vision. It is an art . . . as opposed to a craft." As he noted, describers are not just "describing what they see." They not only have a good speaking voice, good vocabulary, and outstanding command of the language, but they also have an innate ability or "feeling" for what's going on in a program. They are "translating an audiovisual event into a purely audio event." This was his vision that started in the 1970s and continued until his death in 1996.

Tags: history, description