The Audio Description Project (ADP) has announced the winners of this year’s ADP Awards. These awards recognize individuals and organizations that “make outstanding contributions to the quality, availability, and understanding of audio description.” Award recipients represent entertainment, education, and information and their work demonstrates achievement in digital access as well as live delivery of AD through a range of platforms and venues. In making the announcement, “The ADP applauds the dedication to and advancement of inclusion by the award recipients.” The 2024 winners are:
Media: Jehovah’s Witnesses for initiating an audio description program where their staff and volunteers work with members of the blindness community;
Performing Arts (Organization): The Audio-Description Learning Network (ADLN), a consortium of four Philadelphia-area theaters that trains audio describers who team with members of the blindness community to get feedback on their work;
Performing Arts (Individual): Beth Crabb, audio description team member at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, where she describes music, costumes, set design, and “cast of characters;”
Special Achievement in Performing Arts: Think Outside the Vox, for their work “to revolutionize diversity and accessibility in the arts.” They team with blind trainers and experts so that their describers learn best practices for creating AD for live theater and museums;
Public Sector: The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for developing “Alcohol and Your Brain,” a module that educates young people about how alcohol affects the brain, featuring an audio-described version to be included in NIH Section 508 accessibility trainings to “demonstrate effective AD and captioning.”
Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl Memorial Award for Audio Description Research and Development: Kyle Sisk, Chief Technology Officer at the Described and Captioned Media Program, who “introduced a process that ensures audio description script accuracy.”
The American Council of the Blind’s (ACB) Audio Description Project aims to promote and advocate for the use of high-quality Audio Description in television, films, performing arts, museums, educational materials, and other formats “where the presentation of visual media is critical to the understanding and appreciation of the content.” For more information about this year’s recognition, read the news release: ACB Announces 2024 Audio Description Project Awards. For a video of the awards presentation, visit the ACB YouTube page on the 2024 ADP Awards with AD.
ACB Opens Voting for the 2024 Audio Description People’s Choice Awards: Votes Accepted through August 4, 2024
The American Council of the Blind (ACB) has announced that the finalist vote for the 2024 Audio Description People’s Choice Awards is open through August 4, 2024. Winners will be recognized during the ACB Audio Description Awards Gala, being held virtually on November 14, 2024. The Gala honors achievements in audio description in media and recognizes “the commitment to accessible entertainment.” People Choice Awards provide an opportunity for fans to be involved and show their support for “the audio description they love the most.” Finalists include five films and series. The films are Barbie, Dune 2, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and Society of the Snow. Series include All the Light We Cannot See, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, A Real Bug’s Life, The Regime, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Read more on the webpage announcing that the ACB Opens Voting for the 2024 Audio Description People’s Choice Awards.
