he production of audiodescriptive scripts for videos made by beginners: common difficulties and suggestions to avoid them

Abstract

The teaching of audio description (AD) techniques, as a visual translation modality and accessibility resource, is increasingly present in several types of courses: free courses, such as curricular component of university courses, extension and postgraduate courses. It is likely that many beginning students, in producing the first AD script for videos or films, have similar difficulties. In this study, the goal was to detect similar difficulties for beginning students by producing the first AD script for video, to then offer suggestions to AD teachers. Forty-nine scripts of the Course on Audiodescripts Principles and Techniques: Applicability in Educational Cultural Contexts, promoted by the Nucleus of Distance Education of UNESP and conducted in 2016, were analyzed. Among the most commonly encountered difficulties are: absence of description where there could be; audio-descriptive text reading time greater than the time available in the video; undue use of defined articles in lieu of undefined and/or omission of indefinite articles; personal interpretations; use of ambiguous possessive pronouns and unnecessary use of technical/film language. It was noticed that most of the difficulties presented by the students are due to the fact that they did not have enough contact with professional models of audio descriptive scripts before producing the first script. Detecting some of the most common difficulties in beginning AD scripts makes it possible for future courses and teachers, aware of these difficulties, to work on them so that they no longer occur from the first script produced by the students.