People involved in creating audio description are often under pressure to deliver more and more work whiles the funding is constant or going down. How under these circumstances can they still guaranty a high-quality product? This presentation will discuss a few ideas that might improve the quality of audio description – and will not necessarily extend the costs of the process.
The model of a three-people team – including a blind member – working together on an audio description is used at Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich (and adapted at the Liceu Opera in Barcelona). The higher quality of the outcome is obvious but this model seems more expensive than just having one person doing the job. This presentation will show that in the long run this effect might disappear.
Special software can often speed up the day-to-day work but sometimes costs for software development, licences and converting the working material can counteract this effect. This presentation will analyse software developments in audio description and will show that the technical part might increase only the costs but not the quality.
Since audio description is used in different steps of media use (e.g., a film in cinema, on DVD, on TV), it seems logical to create and produce a description that can be used in every step, which is not what happens sometimes. This presentation will show how planning a description for every step might prevent any double work.

Bernd BENECKE is the head of Audio Description at Bayerischer Rundfunk – the only broadcaster in Germany with an Audio Description Editor. BR delivers around 30 per cent of audio description on German TV and DVDs. In addition, it produces some audio descriptions for cinema presentations. Bernd Benecke started with audio description in 1989 when the first movie was described in Germany. He has worked as an audio description author and narrator for movie distributors, different TV stations and since 1997 for Bayerischer Rundfunk, where he built up the audio description department. Today he mainly trains the authors, revises audio descriptions and directs the narrating and sound-mixing process. He is one of the authors of the German Audio Description guidelines and teaches workshops in different countries (Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Spain).