IFA Friday Lecture

On 21 November 2008 I gave a talk as part of the IFA Friday Lecture series (together with Iwona Mazur). Here’s the abstract:

Audio Description – intersemiotic audiovisual translation
What is Audio Description? How is making visual arts accessible to the blind relevant for audiovisual translation? What do pears have to do with visual impairment? Why is “a sexy brunette” inappropriate as a description for the blind? Why would you employ eye-tracking as a research technique in Audio Description studies?

The presentation will answer the above questions and shed more light on Audio Description as a new intersemiotic trend in audiovisual translation research. We will show how Audio Description makes films more accessible to people with visual impairments. This will be followed by some details about two projects currently underway: AD-Verba, which aims at developing Polish standards for Audio Description, and Pear Tree Project, which is a European project focusing on AD practices across Europe.