Elisa Perego

Audio description norms in Italy: state of the art and the case of “Senza Barriere”

Audio description is a relatively new discipline, particularly in certain European countries, including Italy. Consequently, shared universal criteria that enable describers to rely on a reference point when preparing audio descriptions have long been lacking both within single countries and at a European level. Although the ADLAB project recently filled this gap providing EU guidelines, some virtuous and productive service providers had already managed to distill their best practice into important working documents. This paper focuses on the norms of the nonprofit social cooperative Senza Barriere ONLUS, aiming at a process of inclusion of the Italian blind population in the multimedia world. After defining audio description and offering a short overview on its status in Europe and in Italy, the paper will illustrate the history, scope and focus of the cooperative, its employees, its services, and its committed work in the production of professional audio films. The focus will then move on the audio description tutorial produced by Senza Barriere (Busarello & Sordo, 2011). This will offer a picture of SB’s work and will contribute to placing Italy on the audio description map.

Audio Description: A Laboratory for the Development of a New Professional Profile

ADLAB PRO (Audio Description: A Laboratory for the Development of a New Professional Profile) is a three-year (2016-2019) project financed by the European Union under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2 – Strategic Partnerships, coordinated by the University of Trieste, Italy. Its aim is to define a curriculum for ensuring professional Europe-wide audio description (AD) implementation in all cultural and media sectors through the creation of training materials to develop the new AD professional profile. This paper gives an overview of the project background, priorities and aims and focuses on the nature of its partnership and working activities (Intellectual Outputs) in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the project scope and impact and link them directly to the state of the art in the research field of accessible audiovisual translation.