Audio Description Links - December 2025
Late!
December is like that sometimes. It's been a bit quiet this month. Only one podcast from "The Dark Room", radio silence from the ADNA Presents and pretty much everyone else I follow. Very few articles (and I cheated a little, there are a few that aren't from December 2025, but that's when I found them. So sue me).
However, I can draw your attention to a fantastic research-paper which explores the perspectives on AD creators, and for DIY-ers an excellent "how-to" video guide detailing sound-production for audio-description from Kyle Warwick-Mathieu.
Anyway, hoping 2026 is good to you, and leads to many amazing things.
Podcasts
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A Holiday Celebration (The Dark Room)
Alex and Lee ring in the holiday season by sharing favorite holiday memories, favorite festive films, and a holiday wish list for accessibility.
Articles
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How to describe a work of art (Apollo Magazine)
Alt text in museums doesn’t benefit only low-vision users – it helps all of us think more deeply about how to understand an artwork
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AI is now used for audio description. But it should be accurate and actually useful for people with low vision (The Conversation)
With AI tools, streaming services can get synthetic voices to “read” an audio description script. There’s potential for various levels of automation, while giving users the chance to customise audio description to suit their specific needs and preferences. Want your cooking show to be narrated in a British accent? With AI, you could change that with the press of a button.
However, in the audio description industry many are worried AI could undermine the quality, creativity and professionalism humans bring to the equation.
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Collection Image Descriptions (National Gallery of Art)
The National Gallery strives to provide universal access to our art collection. When we share information and images about the collection across digital platforms, we must make them available to all audiences. Text descriptions of the images of art in our Collection provide visitors who are blind or have low vision access to those artworks. These descriptions focus on each work of art's composition, details, style, and other visual qualities.
Research Papers
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“Made by People, Described by People”: The Changing Work Practices of Audio Description Professionals
AD professionals (producers, writers, narrators, mixers, and quality control specialists) possess expert knowledge of AD development and the constraints that affect their work. However, their perspectives remain largely absent in AD research. We present interviews with 17 AD professionals (8 BLV), detailing their workflows to produce AD for recorded media and live theater. We additionally explore their perspectives on recent changes impacting their work, revealing tensions between advocacy for culturally competent AD and the rise of automations—some beneficial, others with concerning implications for AD quality. Highlighting these tensions, we offer research directions to support AD professionals, and we pose guiding questions for AD and AI innovators on preserving the high-quality human touch professionals consider fundamental to the accessibility provision.
Video
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All You Need to Know About Mixing Audio Description in Two Hours
This two-hour course runs through how I mix Audio Description using Logic Pro, along with a combination of Waves, RX and Sonible plug-ins.