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Accessible Media is Better, More-Inclusive Media

The Access Hound team knows — through decades of professional media-making experience — that accessibility translates directly into more-engaged, happier, and growing audiences, simultaneously making the world a more-inclusive (and better) place. We have leading-edge expertise in Audio Description (AD) services, aka "image description." AD is a process that transforms visual media into audible media, primarily for the benefit of people who are blind or with low-vision but also greatly benefitting people who are print dyslexic or those who just prefer to listen to information rather than read texts.

So let’s work together to make your public place and services more-accessible, more-inclusive, and more-usable to all sorts of people.


Make More-Accessible Media Today
UniD researcher Brett Oppegaard, right, uses an audio recorder to capture the thoughts of Bob Hachey, center, as they walk across the North Bridge with NPS staff member Steve Neth at Minute Man National Historical Park near Concord, MA. Hachey, a former president of the Bay State Council of the Blind, and Neth, a museum technician at Minute Man, were collaborating on a field test of the UniDescription project at the site in July 2018. The North Bridge, which spans the Concord River, is the location of a key opening battle of the American Revolution, a moment Ralph Waldo Emerson memorialized in poetry as the 'shot heard round the world.' In this image, the three are walking across that famous bridge, toward the viewer but to the left, like they are passing by on a two-lane path, with Hachey holding onto Neth's arm for guidance and using his left hand to use his white walking cane. Oppegaard holds the audio recorder in his right hand, as close to Hachey as comfortable, to try to pick up his verbal comments about the environment and evaluations of the Audio Description in the UniD app that he had heard about it. Oppegaard wears a tan vest, with a NPS Volunteer logo on it, to indicate he is on official business. Neth has a lanyard around his neck, also as a form of identification. They both wear long pants. Hachey is wearing shorts and sandals, though, more reflective of the pleasantness of the sunny day. In the background of this scene is a forested area, where an obelisk of a monument rises on a small grassy hill and also tells the story of this place (although without sound). The dirt path is a bit muddy, indicating that despite the current weather, it had rained recently.

UniD researcher Brett Oppegaard, right, uses an audio recorder to capture the thoughts of Bob Hachey, center, as they walk across the Old North Bridge with NPS staff member Steve Neth at Minute Man National Historical Park near Concord, MA. Dr. Oppegaard has a deep personal connection to this national park site. It is near where his 7th Great-Grandfather, Henry Putnam, Sr., was one of the first casualties of the American Revolution, suffering his fate from a "Shot Heard 'Round the World".

Want to Make Your Public Place More Welcoming?

The Access Hound team has the background, training, resources, technical expertise, production tools, and community support to help you to make a more-inviting place for all kinds of people. We offer inclusion-building services ranging from staff training to media production to high-level strategic consulting. Just let us know how we can help you.

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Inclusive Media:
The Access Hound Way

The Access Hound team has been making accessible public media at the highest levels of legal and ethical conformance for more than a decade, including collaborations with more than 200 national parks as well as other types of major public attractions, including aquariums, botanical gardens, libraries, museums, nonprofit organizations, performing arts centers, public art collections, schools, state parks, wildlife refuges, universities, and zoos.

The team’s leader, Dr. Brett Oppegaard, a university professor who has earned the highest academic degree and highest academic rank, has been the principal investigator on multiple federal grants related to media accessibility, with support for his research and community outreach provided by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, and the U.S. National Park Service, as well as from accessibility-oriented corporations, such as Google.

The UniD team distinctively grounds its approaches to complex accessibility issues in the empirical research of Dr. Oppegaard and other world leaders in this area. In other words, we do not guess. We research and test. With our higher purpose of making the world a more-accessible place, we use a portion of the proceeds we earn on this project to build and freely give away robust Open-Access, Open-Source software and webtools aimed at improving Audio Description while building a greater global support system for media accessibility of all types, especially Audio Description.

Get to Know Our Team Better
DESCRIBING: A vertical color photograph. DESCRIPTION: Inside a Pearl Harbor National Memorial exhibit space, from left to right, volunteer Anthony Akamine touches a tactile display of a World War II airplane bomber while UniD Research Assistant Haruka Hopper plays Audio Description about the bronze object. In the background, on a wall-sized illustration, the same type of Japanese airplane can be seen dropping a torpedo into Pearl Harbor. Hopper has a Go Pro camera strapped to her body, with the camera facing forward and capturing Akamineʻs reactions to the media heʻs being provided at this location. Hopper also holds her smartphone in her right hand, about chest level on Akamine, just a few inches away from him, so he clearly can hear the description. Akamine is holding his white cane in his left hand and is touching the model airplane with his right hand, looking down toward the model.

Inside a Pearl Harbor National Memorial exhibit space, from left to right, volunteer Anthony Akamine touches a tactile display of a World War II airplane bomber while UniD Research Assistant Haruka Hopper plays Audio Description about the bronze object on her smartphone.

Accessibility Training for All Levels of Experience

Dr. Brett Oppegaard has worked as a professional educator for more than two decades, including appointments to faculty positions at five universities and colleges. Offering a wide range of training options — from a half-day online workshop to a three-day hackathon, which we call a "Descriptathon" — Dr. Oppegaard is available to lead your media-accessibility educational program in dynamic and hands-on ways. Sessions can cover subjects of a general nature, such as Audio Description fundamentals, AD writing techniques, and AD quality controls beyond legal compliance. Or sessions can be tailored to more-specific activities, such as learning how to best describe people, objects, or maps.

Contact Dr. Oppegaard to Get Immediate Support
DESCRIBING: A conference with presenters and a sign language interpreter. SYNOPSIS: The image depicts a panel-type setup with a presenter on one side, a moderator or another speaker beside him, and a sign language interpreter at the far end. The environment is modern, with a large screen prominently displaying a question to the audience. IN-DEPTH DESCRIPTION: The main speaker, on the left, is a man in his mid-forties with curly brown hair, wearing a dark blazer and an open-collar light blue shirt. He holds a microphone and gestures with his free hand. Positioned to his right is another man, in his late thirties, with short hair and glasses, wearing a dark jacket over a white shirt. He holds a tablet and is listening attentively. On the far right, a woman dressed in black stands against a plain gray backdrop, translating the spoken content into sign language. The large screen behind the speakers displays vibrant colors with text, addressing the audience. The setting is framed by large, floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer glimpses of a modern urban landscape outside.

DESCRIBING: A conference with presenters and a sign language interpreter.

SYNOPSIS: The image depicts a panel-type setup with a presenter on one side, a moderator or another speaker beside him, and a sign language interpreter at the far end. The environment is modern, with a large screen prominently displaying a question to the audience.

IN-DEPTH DESCRIPTION: The main speaker, on the left, is a man in his mid-forties with curly brown hair, wearing a dark blazer and an open-collar light blue shirt. He holds a microphone and gestures with his free hand. Positioned to his right is another man, in his late thirties, with short hair and glasses, wearing a dark jacket over a white shirt. He holds a tablet and is listening attentively. On the far right, a woman dressed in black stands against a plain gray backdrop, translating the spoken content into sign language. The large screen behind the speakers displays vibrant colors with text, addressing the audience. The setting is framed by large, floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer glimpses of a modern urban landscape outside.

From Alt-Text to AD:
The Difference Between Legal and Usable

To understand media accessibility from the audience's point of view is to know that legal compliance does not ensure usability. For example, if the images on this page used the alt-text HTML field for the screen reader to just say "image" or "dog2378.jpg" that would meet current legal compliance, but a person who cannot see or cannot see well only might know from those spare labels that visual information for the image is available ... to other people.

At the same time, another message is being sent loud and clear: All of that visual information is not for you millions of Americans, who are DeafBlind, blind, with low-vision or print dyslexia, or those of you who simply want to know information via audio, as a way to keep your hands free or just because you like to hear it rather than read it. A dog might be in the "dog2378.jpg" image, perhaps, but a person who is blind also would not know if that dog is a Chihuahua or a Great Dane. What is the dog doing? Why is this image being used on this page? Those become mysteries, and such cryptic text about an image is akin to saying, "We know things by looking at them. We are sharing those things with other sighted people but not you. You don't really need to know about it, do you? You are not welcome to know about it, either, because we show how much we care about you by the 'alt-text' we create."

Another primary point of confusion is the term for what we do. We call it Audio Description (AD), because that is the term preferred and used by the American Council of the Blind and many other major associations of blind people around the world. To be more specific, we focus on "static" Audio Description, which covers the remediation of any visual media into audio that does not move, such as photos, illustrations, maps, collages, charts, tables, etc. Some people focus on "dynamic" Audio Description, which covers television, film, live events, etc. We can do that type of work, too, but we specialize in remediating static imagery.

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DESCRIBING: A vertical color photograph. DESCRIPTION: Hawaii Association of the Blind members Hilarion and Lance Kamaka stand silently and with reverance near the name-filled marble walls inside the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. This Pearl Harbor National Memorial site commemorates the nearly 1,200 people who died on that ship when it was attacked and sunk on Dec. 7, 1941 in the Oahu harbor. Hilarion is standing behind his older brother and resting his right hand on Lance's right shoulder. Lance is holding a white cane, and the men also have visible hearing aids, indicating they are both hard of hearing and blind. The brothers recalled visiting the National Park Service site decades ago, as children, but had felt that the site at the time was inaccessible to them and not worthy of a return visit. That changed when they were invited back in April 2023 as part of a research project being conducted by The UniDescription Project. On this return visit, Lance said, the site's accessibility had improved greatly, and this improved access allowed him and his brother to properly pay their respects to the people who had perished and also to learn more about the history of the place and its role in World War II. For our part, the UniD research team has collaborated with the Hawaii Association of the Blind and the Pearl Harbor staff, including Chief of Interpretation David Kilton, to audio describe the site's official print brochures for Pearl Harbor National Memorial, the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, the U.S.S. Oklahoma Memorial, and the U.S.S. Utah Memorial. Descriptions of those national park sites (and more than 150 others) are available now in the free UniD app (for iOS or Android).> <p class=Hawaii Association of the Blind members Hilarion and Lance Kamaka stand silently and with reverance near the name-filled marble walls inside the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, listening to the Audio Description about the site, including the list of names of the victims of the attack.

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