Doctoral project titled: Designing Quality Standards in Audio Description

While audio description (AD) becomes one of the most widely researched AVT modalities, AD quality does not seem to have attracted the interest of many researchers so far. This stands in stark contrast to research on other modalities, especially subtitling and live subtitling, where quality is a pivotal issue and has been driving the sharp increase of audience reception studies in AVT (e.g., Di Giovanni & Gambier, 2018). AD quality is not merely an underrepresented topic in university research, but also a cogent problem in industry. The overreaching aim of the project is to create clear evaluation procedures of AD, based on first extensive and long-term analysis of AD quality. To do that we will attempt to define AD quality and map the relationship between AD scripting process and AD quality. While the project aims at introducing new themes in AD research (quality, AD process research) it also proposes employing research methodology that so far has been rarely used in AD research (keystroke logging, heart rate recording, presence questionnaires, interview, focus group, think aloud protocols, screen and face recording).