[Syna Khanna]: Midterm Portfolio – #4 Audio Description – Digital Accessibility and Creative Applications: Fall 2024

The Project

Project Description

In this project, I added extended audio description to my creative captions video. This means that I added audio descriptions throughout the video and explained what is going on in the scenes and also came up with conclusions to add an additional meaning to the story.

Documentation

Step-by-step documentation consists of the following: Step 1: I opened my "Found Footage" project video. Step 2: I opened QuickTime Player to start screen recording. Step 3: I played the video. Step 4: I paused the video whenever I needed to add audio description. Step 5: I exported the video.

Reflection Questions

1. What is the theme of the work?

The theme of the work is to add extra (inline or extended) audio descriptions to videos besides the text caption as some people may have a hard time understand the visuals of the video. For my video, I chose to do extended audio description.

2. How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?

The theme is expressed through the modality of the week as I added verbal description/narration of what was going on throughout a video clip on top of the captions which are already in the video. Moreover, I analyzed this information and came to conclusions about the characters and the plot to add extra meaning.

3. Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?

Something which I think is wonderfully expressed through this modality is the descriptions of the scenes. I also think my analyses of the different scenes are impactful because it allows the audience to view the short film with a certain perspective.

4. Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?

Something which might have been lost through the process is how others interpreted the scenes from other perspectives. This is because I included my own conclusions based on my analyses of the scenes.

5. Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work? Who is this modality not accessible for?

This modality is not accessible for those who are hard of hearing. An example of why is that they can only read the text captions within the video but cannot hear my verbal narration.

6. Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population?

To include those who are hard of hearing, I could add additional text captions to transcribe my own narration of the piece. Also, I could include a separate description and analysis for the video (possibly in the video description as an example).