Increased Subjectivity in Audio Description of Visual Art: A Focus Group Reception Study of Content Minimalism and Interpretive Voicing

Abstract

This article discusses a focus group reception study of visual art audio description (AD) that focuses on the standard style as described in previous corpus-based studies, along with one of the less frequent approaches also found among current practices, namely the “gist” style. The results from the qualitative analysis of the focus group discussions show that user experience of the gist AD style varies among participants, with some reporting positive impressions thereof. In addition, users’ experience of AD has several layers, since the discussions progressed from specific aspects to broader questions dealing with the very definition of AD and user preferences regarding visual arts.