Hi there,
Welcome to our Enhancing Audio Description Newsletter, where we’ll keep you updated on our latest events, podcast releases, and research progress.
Events
We’re thrilled to announce that our abstract submission portal is now open for the Conference on Disability, Accessibility, and Representation in the Creative Industries (DARCI) 2025. This conference will take place from Wednesday, September 10th, to Friday, September 12th 2025, at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York, UK. For more information, please visit our website, where you’ll find submission guidelines, a list of potential topics, deadlines, registration fees, and the link to the submission portal.
DARCI Podcast and Blog Posts
Since our last newsletter, we’ve been busy publishing new episodes! In June, Mariana interviewed Dr. Kulnaree Sueroj, who discussed her research on audio describing gestures and facial expressions in Thai television dramas as well as broader matters of Audio Description in Thailand. The following episode featured Dr. Samantha Moore, an animator and researcher with an interest in documentary, science and art, and practice as research. The episode discussed Sam’s perspectives on accessibility as a filmmaker as well as the collaboration with the EAD team for the BAFTA-nominated documentary Visible Mending. We then had the pleasure of hosting Elle Chante, a UK-based musician who explores complex mental health and disability in her work. Our latest episode for now features Jonathan Penny, who oversees subtitles, audio description, and signed content delivery at Channel 4 and who provided insights into accessibility for film and television as well as theatre. You can access all the podcast episodes directly through Spotify and Acast, or read the accompanying blog posts with transcriptions on our website using the hyperlinks in the paragraph above.
In upcoming episodes, you can look forward to hearing from Dr. Ana Tamayo, Michelle Duxbury, and Professor Hannah Thompson. Ana is an Associate Professor at the University of the Basque Country, focusing on media accessibility and minoritised languages. Michelle is a Wakefield-based artist. Her practice draws on various creative and academic disciplines working across various media and often combining multiple sensory experiences, embedded with accessibility. Hannah is a partially blind academic and activist based at Royal Holloway University of London, whose work explores the intersections of critical disability studies and French studies. We’ve also published two new blog posts. The first one focused on the podcast episode Mariana did for The Mix Room with Genelec featuring research on the EAD methods. The second was focused on a talk for the Women in Research Network in which Mariana explored the EAD methods, in particular by using examples from the short animated documentary Visible Mending (Moore 2023).
Research News
An important aspect of our project is working with professional film and television productions. In addition to the successful collaborations on Spines (Inman 2023), Visible Mending (Moore 2023), and Mami Fatale (GS Animation), the team has recently completed the integration of their EAD methods into the short documentary Follow the Dogs (Garrett 2024), an outstanding live action and animation piece.
Gavin and Michael in the AudioLab at the University of York have started investigating the influence of reverb on audience perception using computer simulations to inform their listening tests, while Mariana and Krisztian are writing papers linked to the project’s first research question: How can sound convey cinematographic and picture editing techniques to visually impaired audiences?
If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at enhancingad@gmail.com. Social media updates on the project are added on Twitter/X @Mariana_J_Lopez and on Bluesky @marianajlopez.bsky.social.
Thanks!
EAD team
