LUCS seminar: May 14th, 10.15 Jana Holsanova and Maja Rudling: Title: "Event Segmentation in Films with Audio Description for People Without Sight: Towards Neurocognitive Insights"

The ability to see is something most of us take for granted. However, for people with blindness or severe visual impairment (BVI), most information that is not communicated through language or sound goes missing. One way to increase the accessibility of visual information for these groups is through audio description (AD), a verbal narration of visual events. The main task of an audio describer is to select what to describe, how to describe it, and when to describe it, in ways that meet the needs of the BVI. These verbal descriptions are intended to evoke “mental images” and to enhance the meaning-making process. In this way, the audio describer is filling the gaps that are missing in the interplay of various communication resources and creates a new discourse that supports understanding, experience and enjoyment for the blind users.
    In the first part of our presentation, we will give a brief overview over results of our recent experimental studies aiming to identify similarities and differences in how the sighted and the blind understand, remember and segment visuospatial and temporal properties of events. We will also indicate how these results can be applied to increase the quality of AD and to support the training of audio describers and AD practices, and ultimately facilitate the understanding and accessibility of visual information for the visually impaired. 
    In the second part of the presentation, we will focus on our planned study within the AUDEA project where we will systematically investigate the differences in neural activation in sighted and visually impaired people when they watch film or listen to audio description of films. In particular, the focus will be on neural processing of visual versus auditory reception in relation to segmentation of events. With our study set-up, we will investigate differences and similarities in neural activation and event segmentation between sighted and blind individuals and between sighted individuals who receive a film either auditory or visually.