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Visit our other site www.mediaaccess.org.au for all the latest news, information and help on captioning issues in Australia. 

Arts and audio description

Audio Description in Museums & Galleries

Visitors to some of Australia's museums and galleries are able to access the visual content through audio guides. They are commonly used for foreign language translation purposes but have evolved into same language guides to provide further background information on exhibits, and descriptive English language guides targeted at people with vision impairments.

The use of audio guides has become increasingly typical of a visit to a museum or gallery, lessening the feeling some may have of requiring specialist equipment to access exhibitions. Audio guides are usually available at the ticket counter of a museum or gallery so can be picked up when you first arrive. There is often a small fee to hire an audio guide, on top of the admittance fee.

An audio guide consists of a headset and handset that a visitor wears whilst viewing various exhibits. Audio guides can be navigated through at an individual's pace. Some audio guides have features to serve vision impaired visitors, including easy to use control buttons, telephone style keypads and raised dots identifying the number five.

Examples of Australian museums and galleries where you can use audio guides are:

Audio Description and Music

Music based productions come in many forms including opera, symphony, rock concerts and musical theatre. Although these art forms are primarily aural art forms, there is still an element of them that cannot be accessed if you have a vision impairment.

Additional information in programs can offer a valuable insight into a concert, providing notes on composers, the compositions and performers for example. As well as programs, information on the stage settings, costumes and movements of performers on the stage can be lost without the assistance of audio input. This information can be provided in two forms; either audio description during a performance or audio introductions, which can be listened to before, after or in the interval of a performance.

At this point in time, audio description is available at some opera performances in Melbourne only. This is provided by the Vision Australia volunteer audio description service.

Audio introductions are yet to be introduced to Australia. Media Access Australia is working with a number of major orchestras and venues to encourage the uptake of these. In the meantime, read about what's happening with Audio Description in the Arts Internationally.

Audio Description and Theatre

Audio description is regularly provided by volunteer describers from Vision Australia for selected productions of a number of theatres in eastern Australia, including the Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre, and Canberra Theatre Centre. An audio described theatre schedule is available here.

To receive audio description you are provided with personal headphones and the narrative is delivered during gaps between the actors' dialogue. It is performed live at these events by a trained audio describer who has worked closely with the actors to ensure the correct timing of the narration.

Audio description extends beyond the play itself, giving you details of the program and descriptions of costumes and stage settings before a performance starts.

Some productions allow a tactile tour of the stage, costumes and scenery prior to the commencement of the production.