How Does Description Benefit Students Without Visual Impairments?
How Audio description expands the effectiveness of video-based media in the classroom and appeals to diverse learners.
In the DCMP’s Description Key for Educational Media, Dr. Kay Ferrell and Mary Ann Siller present a detailed and thoughtful examination of Audio description’s role as a vital tool for students who are blind or visually impaired. Though the volume of formal research into the benefits of description is fairly light (yet sorely needed), it doesn’t require a great leap of faith to understand how description can make or break the experience of watching a video for a student with a visual impairment.
However, Audio description can most definitely be a boon to improved perception and learning for many people outside the roughly 1% of our population who are blind or visually impaired. In addition to patience in dealing with a frustratingly short supply of described programming, learning by listening to Audio description requires little more than a bit of focus and a mind open to improvement.
A Research-Based Foundation
Much of the basis for our insistence that description can benefit students other than those with visual impairments rests on the work of U.C. Santa Barbara psychology professor Dr. Richard Mayer. Famous for his work in developing and improving multimedia and distance learning materials and techniques, Mayer (unintentionally) laid much of the groundwork for our claim through his cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Google Book Search offers a preview of the “Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning” chapter of The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning).
According to Mayer’s theory—itself based on an amalgamation of several other accepted psychological principles, such as Paivio’s dual-coding theory and Baddeley’s model of working memory—humans learn more effectively when information is presented simultaneously in multiple “modes” (i.e., visual AND audible/verbal) than when only one mode is used (e.g., description of a video presented as printed text rather than spoken words). Results of research intended to test this approach in an educational setting have generally been supportive of Mayer’s theory.
The icing on the cake of Mayer’s theory is that several core principles of effective multimedia design for learning are among the central guidelines for quality educational description found in the Description Key. The “contiguity principle”—words and images should be presented as close together as possible to heighten context—resembles #4 in the “Timing” section. The “coherence principle”—students learn better from a concise summary than a long, detailed report—closely resembles #3 in the “Vocabulary and Language” section. And so on.
It is worth noting that Mayer’s research did not take into account the use of Audio description as it is generally defined; his work began with process-based instructional materials (e.g., how to inflate a bike tire) and expanded to include more academically targeted materials. However, one can clearly draw a parallel between the type of audio used in Mayer’s experiments and the Audio description track on a video.
Other Benefits of Listening to Audio Description
Listening is a much higher-order skill than simple “hearing,” requiring constant training and practice. Using the premise that context-relevant Audio description of visual content improves learning, it isn’t a stretch to suggest that Audio description can aid in the acquisition and development of several important learning skills:
Language Development
Listening is one of the first steps in learning one’s primary or secondary language.
Auditory Learners
An estimated 20–30% of students retain information most effectively when it is conveyed through sound.
New Media Literacy
Listening is one building block in the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication in many forms.
Writing and Speaking
Because good Audio description is succinct and extremely context-relevant, listening to Audio description can aid students’ written and spoken communication skills, particularly in situations that require descriptive or persuasive language.
A Cure for the Common (Visual) Couch Potato
Another reason that we insist that Audio description is good for everyone is more straight-forward, even if it’s a bit anecdotal: Audio description can help to prevent what we refer to as “visual couch potato syndrome.”
Our society has adopted a passive relationship to the ever-increasing amount of visual media available to us. Think about it: What electronic device for sale today doesn’t feature some form of audio/visual stimulation? Whether it is a psychosocial instinct or the intended effect of some advertising conglomerate, humans seem to turn off their analytical brain while immersed in the experience of video programming.
Audio Description can help stem the tide of the cascading sound and picture inherent to video-based media. By simultaneously stimulating both channels of the information processing center in the brain, words and pictures can be better analyzed and the viewer’s viewing experience grounded in such a way as to promote awareness—if not analysis—of the message being conveyed. In the absence of large-scale integration of media literacy concepts into school curricula, Audio description may have the ability to wake up young minds and get them involved in the programming they love to consume.
Related Reading
Descriptive Children’s Television: Bridging the Gap for Blind Kids While Benefiting All Kids [PDF]
While some research has been conducted about the benefits of description and blind adults, no empirical data have been collected relating to benefits of description for children. In this paper by Melanie Peskoe, literature has been reviewed to discuss (1) the emerging trend toward educational programming for preschool-aged children, (2) the various theories about how children learn, and (3) the implications of description for both blind and sighted children. This paper serves as a foundation for future, needed research on this topic and calls for attention to be paid to both the social impact of description as well as the methods used for deciding when, what, and how to describe.
Descriptive Video: Using Media Technology to Enhance Writing
A lesson plan from ReadWriteThink about using Audio description to improve students’ written communication skills. This example utilizes Disney’s popular The Lion King (a captioned and described excerpt is available from NCAM), but teachers can broaden their approach to this lesson by utilizing any one of the hundreds of accessible titles available from the DCMP collection.