The UAB promotes the audio describer as a new professional figure

12/09/2016

It is exactly two years since ADLAB, a European project focused entirely on the audio description of film for the blind and sight-impaired community, came to an end, acknowledged for its best practices and awarded the status of success story. It was coordinated by the University of Trieste and now a new project, ADLAB PRO, the natural successor to ADLAB, has been launched.
 
Based on the results attained previously, it marks an important step forward. The aim this time is to create free-access, flexible, didactic materials of a modular and personalisable nature, for the creation of an extremely important yet little known professional figure with a key role in the field of media accessibility: the audio describer.
 
The audio describer is an audiovisual translator charged with producing verbal descriptions for the blind community, descriptions which recount the visual features of a work of art or an audiovisual product (a film, a museum, a dance, a sporting event or a religious ceremony, etc.). The new project falls within the programme Erasmus +, Key Actions 2 – Strategic Partnerships. Again, the University of Trieste has the coordinating role with a budget of € 449,995 and consisting of 8 partners from 7 European countries belonging to: academia (University of Trieste, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universiteit Antwerpen, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu), the professional world (Utopian Voices Ltd., Radiotelevizija Slovenija Javni Zavod Ljubljana, Soundfocus) and the user association Royal National Institute of the Blind.
 
UAB participates in the project through its TransMedia Catalonia research group (Department of Translation and Interpreting and East Asian Studies), which continues its research line on media accessibility. TransMedia Catalonia currently leads the ACT project (PI: Pilar Orero) and participates in the ADLAB PRO project (PI at UAB: Anna Matamala).