Excerpt from Adding Audio Description to Television Science Programs: Impact on Legally Blind Viewers

Each viewing session began with a brief introduction to explain what would be happening and set the session in the context of the larger study. All groups saw the program Orphans of Time from The New Explorers series first. After seeing the program, each participant responded individually to the set of questions dealing with the program content and bis/her response to it. Each participant chose whether to respond in regular print, large print, braille, or by having someone read the questions and record the answers; each person was allowed as much time as necessary to answer the questions. The participants had a break with refreshments before seeing the first half hour of Wild Dogs of Africa from the Nature series and answering questions based on this half of the program. At the end of the session, the participants were thanked for coming, reminded about the follow-up interview, and asked not to talk with other blind people about the content of the programs or questions.

The experimental variation was that half the viewing sessions showed Orphans of Time with description and Wild Dogs of Africa without description. The other half showed Orphans of Time without description and Wild Dogs of Africa with description. Everyone was given the same questions whether s/he had seen the described or the undescribed version of the program. Thus, each person served as an experimental participant for the program s/he saw with description and control for the program s/he saw without description.

In order to test whether adding the verbal description of visual material conveyed more information than seeing the program without the additional descriptions, we included questions based on the audio description. However, we were concerned that some participants would feel less adequate because they did not know factual information shown in the program. To minimize such impacts, we talked about these issues in the focus groups and with the participants in the pre-test sessions; they did not report any discomfort. We also took two additional measures. First, before showing each program, and again before administering the questions, we emphasized that we were testing how well the programs worked and not how knowledgeable the participants were. Second, we included I don't know as one of the answers to each factual question and said explicitly that it was as useful an answer as any other since we were trying to find out how effective the programs are.

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