Audio Description Style and the Film Experience of Blind Spectators: Design of a Reception Study

Abstract

In this article, the methodological aspects of a reception study on audio description (AD) are presented. Our hypothesis is that interpretative audio descriptions offer a better experience to AD users and we have tested it with visually impaired participants in Catalonia. We have compared three different audio description styles: a denotative, a cinematic and a narrative AD style. Firstly, we present our experimental material: the selected film, Nuit Blanche (Arev Manoukian, 2009), and a threefold narrative, cinematic and AD-oriented analysis to inform audio description creation. Then we detail the framework based on functionalist translation theory in which we defined our three AD styles. After that, we describe and discuss our experimental design: participants selection, questionnaires designed to get insights into the emotional and cognitive film reception, focus group interviews. The study is still ongoing but we can end the article with preliminary findings, which indicate that comprehension enjoyment and emotion are closely linked in the film experience and can be affected by the audio description.