ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an audio description (AD) as an accessible form of audiovisual translation (AVT) for the blind and visually impaired people, and explores the composition of its primary target audience, with particular emphasis on its heterogeneity and diversified needs. It outlines the history of AD both as a professional practice and as an academic discipline, and focuses on AD guidelines, showing the commonalities and the differences that exist between those already available on the market. The chapter examines some of the most relevant aspects of the language of AD, including the qualities shaping its key lexical features and other idiosyncratic trends identified through corpus-based research. It provides an overview of the most relevant findings of AD reception research involving both visually impaired persons and sighted viewers. Lexical, grammatical, syntactic and stylistic choices therefore become crucial to warrant that AD is at the same time usable, effective and enjoyable. Ideally, AD should be meticulous, concise, visually intense and usable.
