Audio Description & Accessibility
Welcome to ADACOM
The lab Audio description for accessible communication (ADACOM) is led by Jana Holsanova, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Science. ADACOM gathers researchers from three different departments at Lund University. Our affiliated researchers are:
- Roger Johansson (Department of Psychology, Lund university)
- Viveka Lyberg-Åhlander (Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund university)
- Johan Mårtensson (Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund university)
- Diederick Niehorster (Humanities Lab, Lund university)
- Post-doc: Maja Rudling (Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund university)
- Project assistants: Erika Sombeck, Tina Rastegar and Linn Petersdotter
Audio Description
Audio description (AD) offers a richer and more detailed understanding, experience and enjoyment of, for example, films for blind and visually impaired audiences. The task of the sighted audio describer is to select relevant visual information from e.g., a film scene (events, environments, objects, people, their appearance, clothing, facial expressions, gestures and body movements) and express this information aurally, by using vivid descriptions. These verbal descriptions of visual content activate internal images of the blind audiences and enhance their meaning-making process. However, there is still little knowledge about how the scene content should be described so that the end users get involved and empathize with the story.
In the process of AD, the audio describer faces the challenges of choosing what to describe, how to describe it and when to describe it, in ways that meet the needs of the end users.
We investigate both production and reception of AD from a cognitive perspective, in the framework of theories on relevance, multimodality, mental imagery and embodied cognition.
Featured Projects
We are currently conducting research in three projects: ”How the blind audience receive and experience audio descriptions of visual events”, a three-year interdisciplinary research project funded by FORTE (Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare), and “Audio description and accessible information”, funded by Lund University. Our research group is also engaged in the thematic collaborative initiative ”Audio description and image description for accessibility and social inclusion” (ADACOM), including five external partners. Read more about our research on the page “Projects” (link) and the thematic collaborative initiative on the page “Networks” (link).