Synaesthetic access to Visual contents: audio description of films for visually impaired people

This paper aims to give evidence to a specific area of research in the domain of Communication Design, taking into consideration the relationships and interactions that exist among different sensory modalities – and more in general their perceptual behaviour – in the process of access to communicative artefacts or systems. This means to study the sensorial modalities available to content access, their sensorial specificity and their transferability on different registers and media. It also entails the definition of the connections between sensorial characteristics, their linguistic and physical properties, and the link between perception and language mediated by technology and by communicative artefacts or systems. In this paper, we present an applied research on a specific design problem related to the access of visual contents by visually impaired people. In particular, we outline the main characteristics and tendencies that occur while adapting a film so that visually impaired people can access its visual contents. Audio description is the most commonly used form for this specific adaptation and, in the case of films; it is achieved by adding verbal audio-recorded pieces of description in between the gaps of dialogue and/or relevant audio effects of a film. These characteristics and tendencies were collected during a case study, part of a PhD research and examined in the didactic laboratory, comparing two versions of audio described films, each in a different language. This is a rather exploratory research used to identify how two different audio description versions of the same film handle information (e.g. disparities and contradictory verbal descriptions of visual images); with the main objective of trying to establish a framework for methods of designing audio description. In addition, we also present a brief research project on Mojito. This is a short-film written and directed by the Italian Stefano Bruno, which was produced with the intention of being either only listened to or watched in its audio visual form. The research was carried out with 28 Design students at Politecnico di Milano and explores the possibilities and differences between the two modes of experience, measuring the level of understanding of the group in each of these modes. Results from the two individual studies have shown that there exists a sinaesthetic effect when watching films without actually seeing them. The descriptive words induce this sinaesthetic effect which in turn helps the visually impaired to reconstruct the original film’s visual input and message. A sinaesthetic approach is of great benefit when designing audio visual products for the visually impaired and will optimize audio visual accessibility.