BEYOND THE VISIBLE: FOR THE ADOPTION OF AN EMANCIPATORY PARADIGM IN AUDIO DESCRIPTION

Abstract

Audio description (AD) is a type of translation that aims at making audiovisual materials accessible. Its primary audience is made up of blind or low vision people for whom the resource is a source of information and leisure. In recent years, the quality of the descriptions offered and their suitability for the target audience have become extremely relevant issues, leading researchers to rethink certain parameters that have been guiding the area. One of these points to be reviewed is the compensatory character traditionally attributed to AD, according to which the translator becomes “the eye” of those who do not see and AD becomes the instrument that compensates for their “loss” of vision. The idea that the experience of sighted and visually impaired people should or even could be equated, and that this should be the ultimate goal of AD ends up rescuing long-abandoned concepts, such as, for example, the ideal of “equivalence”. In this paper, we discuss the roots and negative consequences of this practice, as well as present an alternative option: the emancipatory paradigm. Under this new paradigm, AD overcomes assistentialist tendencies, contributing to better help its target audience enjoy audiovisual products in their own way.