How the blind audience receive and experience audio descriptions of visual events. Does the quality or the interpreter’s voice and speech matter?

Abstract

The theoretical aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the principles that underlie successful communication between the sighted and the blind via audio description (AD). The aim of a series of experiments is to identify similarities and differences in how the sighted and the blind understand, segment and experience visual, spatial as well as temporal properties of an event.

The presentation will cover recent results from the study with particular focus on the effect of the interpreter’s voice quality and pace of speech on the blind person’s perception of a movie and different audio-described situations. Our previous research in schoolchildren has shown that the quality of the speaker’s voice and speed of speech influences listeners’ perception and their processing of the message.

Bio

Viveka Lyberg Åhlander is a certified Speech Language Pathologist. She is Professor of Speech and Language Pathology at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland since 2019 and Associate Professor at Lund University. Lyberg Åhlander has extensive experience of clinical work with patients with voice disorders and her research questions have largely sprung from clinical reality. Lyberg Åhlander's research focuses on voice and voice problems, and on how the speaker's voice quality and communication affect the listener's understanding of the message. Lyberg Åhlander has designed and led/participated in two research projects studying the effects of workplace-based interventions aimed at strengthening teachers' communication. She is currently heading a project based on the assumption that the proportion of healthy older people is increasing and that more people want to be active in later life. This research examines the conditions and challenges for voice and communication in generally healthy older people with the broader aim of understanding how older people can be supported to remain active participants in work and leisure. Lyberg Åhlander is also involved in the Singing Health in Schools project, which investigates the effect of daily singing on children's language development, concentration and well-being.

Viveka Lyberg Åhlander's home page

How the blind audience receive and experience audio descriptions of visual events — Lund University

About the seminar series

Sound and Music Interaction Seminars is a seminar series organized by the Sound and Music Computing group  at the division of Media Technology and Interaction Design , KTH. The list of past and upcoming seminars is available here .