An Investigation of Audio Description Practice and Language Service for Visually Impaired People in Hong Kong - RMGS

Audio description (AD) provides an assistive service that helps visually impaired people or visually weak people (including the elderly) to access audio-visual products (theatre performance, movies and TV programmes). AD is the spoken description either performed live in theatres, or added to the pre-recorded sound track of films.With this service, the life of visually impaired people is enriched and they are more likely to feel that they are part of society. In Hong Kong, AD production has just started and only limited service is provided. Even though there is a considerable number of visually impaired or weak vision people in Hong Kong, only limited AD service is currently provided. Since AD involves multimodal elements and the production process is complicated, audio describers need to be trained in order to master the special skills involved. Therefore, it is not easy to provide new AD services within a short amount of time. This project intends to examine the AD production and implementation process and explore how to improve the quality and quantity of AD in Hong Kong; promote the awareness of language training and service for people who are visually impaired. The study will be carried out in three phases:1) the construction and study of a corpus of existing DVDs with AD in Hong Kong and 2) the development of a theoretical framework for the analysis of materials with AD, 3) collaborating with associations （e.g. Hong Kong Society for the Blind）and schools in promoting language service and training for people who are visually impaired students. The research will contribute to the study of AD, language training and service in both practical and theoretical aspects.