WHAT IS AUDIO DESCRIPTION - A Q&A WITH ROZ CHALMERS

Can you begin by briefly explaining the work you do for those who might be unfamiliar?

As an audio describer my job is to explain anything that the creative team has chosen to represent only visually, so that blind or partially sighted audience members can follow the plot, appreciate the design of the set and costumes and understand the characters’ development through their actions and reactions. I do this by adding information in the gaps between dialogue, writing an audio introduction that explains the appearance of set, characters and costumes, and working with the stage team, lighting and WHAM to develop a preshow  touch tour where this audience can explore the elements of the production through touch, temperature, sound, scent, taste, space, and light. 

Our audience is made of people who are blind or partially sighted from birth, people whose sight is deteriorating over a long period of time and people whose have experienced sudden traumatic sight loss. Some can’t make out the difference between light and dark and some have only peripheral vision. They have different ages, backgrounds, educations, cultural influences, likes and dislikes, and different experiences, regardless of what they can see or not. Many have no ‘mind’s eye’, either because they have never seen colour or a lighthouse or an Art Deco wardrobe or an arabesque, or because their memory of sight has disappeared over time. And we have to try to satisfy them all.

Description is often imagined as neutral, but every adjective, every omission, every decision about where to direct attention carries meaning. Is objectivity in audio description something you strive for, or something you've come to distrust?

I don’t think there’s any such thing as true objectivity in audio description. The moment you choose one verb over another you are putting your thumb on the scale. Knowing this, you need to be able to defend every word you write. So you research and research, talk to any members of the creative team that you can, connect with the actors for any insights on their character and physicality, and learn the play like a piece of music. I think my years of work as a captioner helps me here, because I’m used to listening intently to nuances of speech. 

You learn to pay attention to how an actor is letting the light into their character and you search for the words – in maybe only three seconds of available space – that will convey this clearly and succinctly. How an actor makes a bed, leaves a room, silently reacts to a waiter are all intentional. There is always a verb that illuminates this. Capturing that is so much more rewarding than saying. ‘She walks out angrily.’ 

And it’s shorter. I ask my students to remember the word ‘because’. ‘I know he’s sad because ...’ and then identify what the actor is (or is not) doing to help the audience construct their understanding of the scene. 

Our audiences tell us that they don’t want to be spoon fed with what the describer thinks about the character. The mental puzzling that everyone experiences with a work is very satisfying. They are asking for the silent clues to be made clear. 

And don’t forget that the describer has their vocal toolbox too. Some believe that a ‘speak your weight’ machine approach means objectivity. Others over-dramatize. The prosody of the human voice is filled with information, and we can’t deprive them of that. My mantra is ‘don’t tell me what to think, tell me what to think about.’

There is a lot of discussion amongst describers about acknowledging and recognising your own positionality. Are you the right fit for this job? Do you know someone who would be better? The B/PS community is diverse and they deserve representation too. It’s up to the industry to recognise that and ask for trained describers who have sympathy with the production, and if they are not available, insist on training a more diverse workforce – and that includes disabled and visually impaired people.

Audio description forces us to ask a deceptively simple question: what is worth noticing? Has your work changed the way you experience theatre or even the way you look at the world beyond it?

Firstly, it has changed my theatre going experience, but probably no more than that of anybody who works with plays. Does a lighting designer remain unaware of the lighting design when he visits a theatre for pleasure? Probably not. I do love listening to the way other describers tackle things, but sometimes I just try to immerse myself in the play, and sometimes I manage it! I do find myself tracking props and occasionally a verb will pop unbidden into my head if I see a particularly interesting piece of movement. Because I don’t just describe theatres, but films, galleries, museums and heritage sites too, it is a transferable tool. And I once described a man who came into the VocalEyes office to try a scam, so the police picked him up by the end of the day.

The question ‘What is worth noticing?’… I would say as much as you can, so you have a rich palette to draw from, but there are musts. 

Listen to the audience. If they laugh, gasp or recoil you know you have to explain why. Friends have said to me that there’s nothing more excluding than not knowing what the joke is.

Does an action have consequence down the line? You should never leave an audience wondering ’Well, how did they know that?’ because you didn’t tell them a character was eavesdropping.

Choreographed movement. That means business, fights, dance. We do describe musicals, classical ballet and contemporary dance and there is an audience for it. There is a language for dance that has developed over the years. We don’t describe every movement because that would be overwhelming to listen to, but with research and practise you learn to identify the key moments.

Sounds that are not clear. If a tray of cups smashes to the floor, what happened?

Did someone collapse and drag it with them? Did a waiter walk in on a murder scene? Did someone sweep it off in a fit of rage? And let the director and the lighting designer direct you. What do they want the audience to pay attention to?

You've described everything from intimate plays to visually spectacular productions. Has there ever been a moment that fundamentally challenged your assumptions about what can (or can't) be translated into language?

I haven’t yet come up against anything that defies description, and that includes maths textbooks and maps. Dance is what comes up most often in this question. Dance has been described with words, with onomatopoeia, through breath and a mixture of all three. Dancers have described as they dance, making the effort audible. The question is, is the audio description interesting to listen to? Is it engaging? For as long as someone wants to be in that room, describers are duty bound to do their best. And this is where the blind consultants and the choreographers come in, to help us improve.

Has there ever been a production where you fundamentally disagreed with the way a director wanted something to be perceived? If so, how does an audio describer negotiate that? 

It has happened to me more in captioning than in AD, because captioning is more visible. And I had the difficult conversations and with one exception the directors came to understand what they were asking was unacceptable and discriminatory. Once it’s explained, people normally come round. Accessible theatre is not taught at drama or technical schools, so the first time people come across it, it is usually unknown territory. That has to change.

You've spoken about cognitive load becoming an increasingly important consideration in accessible theatre. Could you unpack what that means, and why it's something artists should be paying attention to?

To break it down, when a B/PS person comes to your show, they come with different types of memory. They have semantic memory, which holds things like how many wives had Henry VIII, what you’d use a kettle for. Auditory memory allows you, amongst other things, to hold the beginning of a sentence in your head until you hear the end. Working memory has a visual and aural channel. It lets you hold and process information in real time—like keeping track of what’s being described while also following dialogue and sound. Working memory has a very limited capacity – 

6-8 items according to some experts, and for B/PS people there will be limited use of the visual channel. That means the AD is fighting for mental space with dialogue, delivery, sound effects, musical cues, and audience reactions.

In essence a describer is designing a script that takes into account the human cognitive limits without having any control over where to put it. Some of things that increase cognitive load are: 

Too many objects or moves mentioned in a short space of time 

Complex construction of sentences

Switching attention from one thing to another

Deciding if the information is relevant or has consequence

There are others, and other ways to mitigate this, but that’s a workshop, not a blog!

What advice would you give theatre makers who genuinely want to make access part of their creative process from day one but may feel unsure how to start?

You can and should always offer two things – a well-written and recorded audio introduction, available in advance, and a touch tour of the playing space, the costumes and props.

You should have visual awareness training from an experienced  B/PS trainer, so you can begin to understand the barriers B/PS people face, know how to guide safely and how to offer a basic overview of your set.

You should do an access audit of your website, your venue, your set and your auditorium, so you are informed about barriers to inclusion and health and safety risks. It isn’t enough to offer audio description; it’s not a Build It And They Will Come situation. Your audience will make choices. Help them to choose you.

When it comes to the AD, get a budget for access so that you can employ a B/PS person and an experienced describer as consultants. 

Think about how you want to deliver the AD. Is it going to be available every night? Will it be written into the script, or recorded on QLab for outputting either to the entire audience or through headphones? Can it be delivered by an onstage character as open description so that everyone can hear it? If you’re using headphones you’ll need to build time into the tech to make sure the signal is clear.

Where and how will you advertise it? There’s a network of organisations in the UK working with B/PS people. Can you tap into that?  And AD can also be useful to someone who is neurodiverse, so it needs to be open advertising too. With creative and integrated description there has been a wide range of options, so be clear what the audience is going to get. Some have been offered with the best of intentions, but the cognitive load has been crushing because it’s been considered as a new creative toy rather than something that has been designed thoughtfully.

We’ve noticed that GAMEPLAY is one of only a handful of shows offering consistent access provision for blind and/or partially sighted audiences at Edinburgh Fringe. In your opinion, what does that say about the way the industry still imagines its audience, and what would have to change for a show like ours to no longer be the exception?

Don’t get me started! I would repeat that it needs to be taught as people come into the industry so that it is no great mystery. I think you only have to listen to the words of B/PS sighted people who have been asked to prove they’re blind, disabled people who have had to go up the road to the toilet in the interval because the venue can’t cope with them, deaf people who have to explain themselves when they use their phones for captions. Relaxed, BSL interpreted, audio described and captioned performances are normally offered once during a run, and in the West End long runners, no more than three times a year. We still have a mountain to climb and it’s 31 years since the Disability Discrimination Act. 

I firmly believe that the future lies with people like Carmen Collective and Part of the Main. As they lead others will follow.