I participated in the 2nd Advanced Research Seminar on Audio Description organised at UAB in Barcelona. I chaired a discussion panel devoted to teaching AD in an academic context and I was also one of the presenting authors of the following paper:

How audio description influences perception – a work-in-progress report on an international eye-tracking study
Agnieszka Chmiel, Iwona Mazur, Paweł Chmiel, Anna Vilaro, Elena Di Giovanni, Pilar Orero

Professional audio describers often face a dilemma what to include in their descriptions, how to order described elements and what to omit due to time constraints. It is thus useful to examine how particular film scenes are perceived by sighted viewers and to what extent audio description can influence that perception. This paper is a work-in-progress report on the first out of three stages of an international eye-tracking study that involves sighted viewers in Poland, Catalonia and Italy. The participants will watch clips from “Marie Antoinette” by Sofia Coppola in three conditions: without audio description, with regular audio description and with modified audio description. The data analysis will focus on the number of fixations and the total observation time in selected AOIs and gaze sequences in selected scenes. The results can contribute to further development of audio description standards by showing audio describers how the perception of sighted viewers should be reflected in the description in order to facilitate scene comprehension for the blind and visually impaired.