Subjectivity and Creativity Versus Audio Description Guidelines

Abstract

For decades, different international guidelines on the field of audio description (AD) have been edited and supposedly followed by practitioners. There is general agreement on what should be included in terms of form, movement, colour, sound, perspective, and supporting information. According to all the guidelines, the style of audio description should be objective, not interpretative, although they do not specify what they mean by “objectivity”. These guidelines are based on the fact that receivers interpret the work of art themselves. However, this idea is unconvincing, as the blind and partially sighted receivers are not on the same level as the sighted viewer in terms of visual and information selection. Moreover, the guidelines do not focus on the different strategies to create AD. This ambiguity is also reflected in the treatment of subjectivity and creativity, as they do not provide any clear definition and are untrustworthy, since they introduce subjective techniques while recommending being always objective. This incongruence, together with the view of art education at the centre of cultural mediation and accessibility nowadays, and its influence on access projects and AD programmes across Europe and beyond, is the base of this proposal. We aim to explore both the comprehensive role of subjectivity and creativity in the guidelines and some of the new trends on AD, such as metaphorical, synesthetic, with interpretative voices, and poetic in our museums, thanks to our practical research and practice during the past decade. This way, we may have a broader and more specific understanding of what their real subjective and aesthetic experience is.