Emerging competences for the emerging profession: a course design procedure for training audio describers

ABSTRACT

With the rising popularity of and legal requirements for media accessibility, a need has arisen to train professional audio describers and, to this end, to educate audio description trainers. This paper aims to serve as guidance for trainers who wish to design and conduct their own audio description course. It first identifies shortcomings in the current audio description training literature. We then specify theoretical foundations for course design, including situated and contextualised learning models. Building on the experience from the ADLAB PRO project, we then present a procedure for designing an audio description course based on learning outcomes and such elements as learning through acquisition, inquiry, discussion, practice and collaboration. This typology of course elements serves as the analytical framework for examples of good practices described in the article. It is the first study to date that shows how audio description training can meet the demands of modern learning models and the requirements of an emerging profession. It can be used as a reference point by all those creating curricula and by trainers willing to enrich their teaching approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Audio description
• course design
• audio describer
• audio description training
• situated learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union under Grant 2016-1-IT02-KA203-024311. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.