ARSAD in Barcelona

I participated in the 3rd Advanced Research Seminar on Audio Description in Barcelona. The presentation I co-authored with Iwona Mazur dealt with methodological considerations of AD reception research. Here’s the abstract:

AD reception research: Some methodological considerations


AD reception research, or collection of feedback from the blind and partially sighted as the target audience of audio described films, seems to be one of the best sources of information to be applied when creating both AD standards and audio descriptions proper. To date, the two most prominent examples of such research have been the AUDETEL project, aimed at the development of AD guidelines, and the “Bollywood for All” project, involving ‘market research’ for Bollywood productions (Rai 2009), both carried out in the UK.

This paper presents experiences gained by the authors when conducting two reception studies. The first one involved a questionnaire distributed to 18 viewers with vision dysfunctions immediately after the screening of audio described “Serce na dÅ‚oni” by Krzysztof Zanussi. The other one is a larger-scale work-in-progress, whose results will be applied in the development of Polish AD standards reflecting the preferences of the blind and visually impaired viewers in Poland, where the participants are being interviewed and presented with AD samples.

The authors discuss various methodological issues, including problems with obtaining a sufficient number of participants, reflecting feedback from visually-impaired AD consultants in the surveys and discovering user preferences. It is suggested that responses concerning objectivity or subjectivity of descriptions should be elicited indirectly (implicitly) rather than directly (explicitly) and that research results are more meaningful if interviews involve comprehension questions and AD samples.