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Audio Description Training and Workshops

Co-located in the Silicon Forest of Portland, Oregon, and the Silicon Valley North (aka Seattle, Washington), the Access Hound team has trained more than 1,000 people in more than 10 countries around the world in the pragmatics of writing and sharing accurate, efficient, and impactful Audio Description. These descriptions make public places more-accessible and more-inclusive to everyone but are especially needed by people who are DeafBlind or blind, or with low-vision or print dyslexia. People who like to learn via audio and podcasts also love AD, which remediates visual information, such as massive text blocks, into audible information that can be heard — hands-free — for all types of situations and audiences. Training and workshop options include:

Staff training options include:

  • A half-day training or workshop (virtual, via Zoom)
  • A full-day training or workshop (virtual via Zoom or in-person)
  • A multi-day customized training or workshop (virtual via Zoom or in-person)
  • Or a full hackathon-like Descriptathon experience.

Descriptathons are special events that require 16+ teams to participate, with at least three core organizational contributers per team. Each organizational team typically includes 3-5 staff members but can include more, without additional costs, up to 8. Those teams will be provided with at least least two representatives from the community who are blind or who have low-vision.

Let's train your staff together
Dr. Brett Oppegaard has been invited to share his research results around the world, including at peer-reviewed venues throughout the United States as well as in formal presentations in Canada, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Kenya, Spain, and Norway.

Dr. Brett Oppegaard has been invited to share his research results around the world, including at peer-reviewed venues throughout the United States as well as in formal presentations in Canada, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Kenya, Spain, and Norway.

DESCRIBING: A horizontal color photograph. DESCRIPTION: Dr. Jordan Frith from Clemson University joined the research team in Honolulu to help conduct field research at Pearl Harbor National Memorial. In this horizontal color photograph, Dr. Frith is slightly to the center of the image, describing to a group of 15 research participants — as well as friends and family members serving as chaperones — how a Near-Field Communication Tag (NFC) works. For this experiment, our team placed a quarter-sized NFC tag on this map that could be accessed and heard via smartphones using the UniD mobile app. To use the tag, the listener just had to open the app, find the tag on the map, and place the phone on the tag. In this image, Dr. Frith is wearing a white collared shirt and sunglasses, and he is standing with the huge circular metal map about at his hip level. He is touching the map with his right hand and holding an audio-recording device in his left hand. Hawaii Association of the Blind members ring the table and are listening to the instruction, with more Pearl Harbor buildings and facilities, lined with trees, in the background.

Project collaborator Dr. Jordan Frith of Clemson University helps with a training session at Pearl Harbor National Memorial.

Media accessibility is a right, not a privilege

Any person who is blind, living in an area of the country during a catastrophic disaster, like a fire or a flood, should not just be told to "check the website" for safety information unless that website assuredly is accessible in a variety of different ways, including to a screenreader, via e-braille, and with Audio Description, so it also is at-minimum usable by that particular blind person. A person who is blind should not be given a piece of paper and told to "read it." Or sent an inaccessible PDF and told to fill it out. Yet those are all common examples of unreasonable, inhumane, and repressive situations faced by people who cannot see or cannot see well and that do not reflect the spirit of the nation's accessibility laws, designed to include all people, regardless of their sensory abilities. Audio Description puts your organization on the right side of history.

Call in the research team
David Kilton, Chief of Interpretation at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, is shown in the foreground, with his back to the camera, listening to a focus group discussion about Audio Description at the National Park Service site. About 20 Hawaii Association of the Blind members are sitting in a U-shaped formation, facing Kilton, engaged in the discussion, although not all of them are included in this particular image. Kilton is dressed in a formal National Park Service uniform, including a tan and round-brimmed hat and khakis, with his buttoned-up shirt a slightly paler color than the dark-green pants heʻs wearing. A long rectangular table in the middle of the room, in the middle of the U-shape made by the chairs, displays three tactile models that are being discussed during this session. Those are of a ship, a soda bottle, and a cooking pot. The HAB members are dressed in casual clothes, with some of them holding white canes and with one guide dog in the image, who is on the floor next to his companion.

David Kilton, Chief of Interpretation at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, welcomes research participants to a training session.

Organizational efforts to be inclusive

Most organizations of any broad societal significance have bylaws or rules or policies, or all of those, and any number of special initiatives that they have created to fill in organizational gaps in relation to clear accessibility objectives and initiatives. Usually, these policy sentiments are expressed in a strategic plan, but sometimes, they exist as stand-alone calls to action, or in other places.

Find the policies in your organization that relate to accessible media and any initiatives made to support more-inclusive practices, such as AD or captioning, and align with them. If you have difficulty finding those policies, that could be a sign that they need you to be an advocate for them. The more difficult the search, the greater the feeling you will have when you find the support statement. And, as a pretty common finding in such a search, if the policies are absent or unable to be found, you might end up being the person in your organizational structure appointed to change that situation, fill that gap, and initiate one of these policies.

In other words, if thought leaders around media accessibility don't exist in your current organization, don't hesitate to become one. There are many external motivations to lead you along (i.e., legal, ethical, moral, etc), even if the organizational motivations start low or are non-existent.

Being an organizational advocate or thought leader for media accessibility means you speak for people in your group who might feel excluded, disenfranchised, or even ostracized just because they have trouble seeing or hearing.

Put your policies into action
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