ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how visual impairment functions as a competence in teamwork between visually impaired and sighted co-authors of audio-description, which is both a form of intermodal translation from images to words, and an access service. The analysis of multimodal interaction between the co-authors at work illustrates versatile activities of the visually impaired participants with regard to audio-describing: for instance how they help interpret the multimodal source texts (films and TV programmes), especially the soundtracks, and how they enhance the understandability of the target text (an audio-described film or programme, known as a “Hörfilm”) being produced. The study found that visually impaired co-authors support work-related tasks, both thanks to and despite their visual impairment, using sensory and epistemic competences. The chapter contributes to EM/CA research into asymmetric interaction, epistemic positioning and negotiation, and the practices of “doing seeing”. It points towards an ethnomethodological study of visually impaired competences in interaction and socially shared cognition.
