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This is an early unpublished editor's draft; content is incomplete and subject to change.

Extended audio descriptions available

foundational

Normative Text

The video pauses to extend the audio track and provides an extended audio description to describe visual information needed to understand the media.

Applies when

  • the existing pauses in a soundtrack are not long enough.
Tests

This section is non-normative.

Procedure

For each media asset with visual content:

  1. Play the media with the extended audio description on.
  2. Check that the extended audio description includes all important visual information that cannot be understood from the main soundtrack alone.

Expected results

  • #2 is true.

Tests

This content needs to be written.

Key Terms

audio

live or recorded sound signal

audio description

narration added to the soundtrack to describe important visual details that cannot be understood from the main soundtrack alone

For audiovisual media, audio description provides information about actions, characters, scene changes, on-screen text, and other visual content.

Audio description is also sometimes called “video description”, “described video”, “visual description”, or “descriptive narration”.

In standard audio description, narration is added during existing pauses in dialogue. See also extended audio description.

If all important visual information is already provided in the main audio track, no additional audio description track is necessary.

extended audio description

audio description that is added to audiovisual media by pausing the video to allow for additional time to fit in the audio description

This technique is only used when the sense of the video would be lost without the additional audio description and the pauses between dialogue or narration are too short.

video

the technology of moving or sequenced pictures or images

Video can be made up of animated or photographic images, or both.