What is audio description?
Audio description gives a spoken description of the detail and imagery in a video to make content accessible to individuals who have a vision impairment. By providing these viewers with a similar experience to a sighted viewer, you make your content accessible to a wider audience.
When do you use it?
As a general guideline, audio description should be used when there is information portrayed visually that's required for understanding. For instance, on-screen text, facial expressions, costumes, and scene changes all give context that help us better understand and enjoy content. If these elements are not audibly described, a viewer who can't see very well might have trouble ingesting the content.
While this guideline may sound simple, the specific needs for description vary case by case. For example, a movie trailer with little dialogue will have plenty of room for descriptions, while an advanced physics lecture with heavy dialogue may not have enough natural pauses to effectively describe what’s happening on-screen. Luckily, the Kaltura Player supports two types of audio description services to help you decide what type is best for your content:
1. Standard audio description - Standard audio description is when the snippets of description are inserted into the natural pauses of the content being described. The description is spoken by a human voice. It's suitable for videos that have long pauses in dialogue or that don't contain speech at all.
2. Extended audio description - Extended audio description is a service that pauses the video to allow for longer descriptions when there's not enough space to sufficiently describe the visuals in your video. The description is generated using Speech Synthesis. For more information, visit our article Extended audio description.
Order audio description per entry
- From the user menu select My Media.
- On the My Media page, click a media entry.
The media entry displays.
- From the Actions drop-down menu, select +Caption & Enrich.
The Captions and Enrichment Services Requests screen is displayed. The screen is divided into two sections: Existing Requests – Here you'll see a list of existing captions and enrichment requests and the status of each.
If there are no existing requests, the following message is displayed: 'No requests were found'.
Order Captions & Enrichment Services – This is where you'll order services.
- Select the Unit – only in case different Reach profiles (budgets) are configured for each unit in your account. The selected unit will be charged for the captions request.
- Choose Professional as the Service. (Note: Audio Description is supported for professional service only and must be enabled by your system administrator.)
- Select English from the drop-down menu. (Note: This service is only available in English)
- Select Audio Description from the Feature drop down.
- Select the Turnaround Time (TAT) from the drop-down menu. The TAT options are set by your administrator.
- Click Submit.
A success message displays: 'Your request has been received. Your video will automatically be updated upon completion'.
The request will be shown on the request list.
If there is an identical request for an audio description service, the system will display an error message: 'Service was already requested for this video'.
If there is insufficient credit to order this service, the system will display an error message: 'The request cannot be fulfilled. Your account credit is depleted. Please contact your administrator'.
You can follow the order status by viewing the status in the Existing Requests screen. If your requests require approval, the request status will be “Pending approval” until the requests are approved.
The audio description will be uploaded when completed, and you'll receive a message that your request has been received.
Notifications must be enabled by your system administrator.
Ordering audio description for multiple entries
- Go to My Media page.
- Select the media you want to order captions for by checking the checkbox next to each media.
- Select Request Captions & Enrich. The Captions & Enrich screen is displayed.
- Follow steps 4-9 above.
User experience
Users can enable audio description on the Kaltura V7 player by clicking Audio Description in the settings menu.
Add audio file for AD
You can upload to KMC an additional mp3 audio for AD. For standard AD, the additional audio track should:
- match the duration of the source video.
- be AAC audio-only in .mp4 container.
- once you add an additional audio track (AD, or alternate language) then you MUST also add the source audio as a standalone audio file for the given language, else the player will not see multiple language options. Once this is done, the player will allow you to toggle between the two audio options.
This applies to AD only. For AAD, KMC only supports via the VTT caption file.
For more information, see our article Manually add audio files to video.
