The Visual Made Verbal: A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description

The Visual Made Verbal:  A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description, with its associated website, offers the first overview of audio description (AD)—its history, its application in a wide range of genres, and techniques for training describers. AD makes the visual images of theater, media, and visual art accessible for people who are blind or have low vision. Using words that are succinct, vivid, and imaginative (via the use of similes or comparisons), a describer conveys the visual image that is either inaccessible or only partially accessible to a segment of the population.


Description may also benefit people who prefer to acquire information primarily by auditory means and those who are limited—by proximity or technology, for instance—to accessing audio of an event or production. Many people may benefit from description’s concise, objective “translation” of the key visual components of various art genres and social settings.