Today I received a call from Elicia at the Superior Alliance for Independent Living in Marquette. She's helping someone make a digital story who wants to show it to the Commission for Blind. They'll need to add audio descriptions to make the video accessible. We talked about adding a voice track with the descriptions in Audacity to the main narration and music tracks. Then export the project with the 3 tracks as a .wav to import into PhotoStory, which only allows one sound file to be imported. They'll need to do two versions of the video, one with and one without audio description. I suggested they use a different person's voice than the narrator for the description. They'll also need to be sure there are enough pauses in the main narration to insert the descriptions.

I sent her some resources on descriptive video I found on the web:

Audio Description (AD) is the descriptive narration of key visual elements of live theatre, television, movies, and other media to enhance their enjoyment by consumers who are blind or have low vision. AD is the insertion of audio explanations and descriptions of the settings, characters, and action taking place in such media, when such information about these visual elements is not offered in the regular audio presentation. http://www.adinternational.org/

Guidelines for Audio Description:
http://www.adinternational.org/guidelines.html

Samples:
http://www.adinternational.org/samples.html

I've been wanting to add audio description for sometime. While I've done some research to learn about them, I just haven't had or made the time to do it. Ideally I'd like to have a player on our web page that would play both open and closed captions and open or closed audio descriptions. Though I found a player that should do this, I just don't have the technical knowledge and skills needed to include it on our web page. I hope to find someone who can help me with this! (If you know a resource, please let me know!)