Audio Description -- Sharing the Vision!

Awareness of Audio Description is growing -- you may have encountered it accidentally by switching to the "Audio with Description" track on a Netflix show! A new, different narrator fits in extra words to describe what's happening visually on the screen or the stage. A sighted audience might find this interesting -- or distracting -- but it can be a boon to the blind and low-vision audience. 

In this presentation Luke Stollings, a volunteer audio describer with Art Spark Texas for ten years, will explain the nuts and bolts, the art and science, of audio description for live theater.

About our Speaker:

Having lived in five different Latin American countries and speaking Spanish fluently, Luke has always been fascinated with the challenges of translating concepts from one language to another.  Over the course of his career, Luke worked as a ropes course facilitator, corporate trainer, bilingual elementary school teacher, and finally an online training developer.  Building online training for a Texas state agency, he learned his products needed to be accessible to literally everyone - and this included people with deafness, blindness, or physical limitations that precluded the use of mouse and keyboard. Learning more about electronic accessibility led to a minor obsession with how best to describe online images in words that blind users can hear with their screen readers. So, when he learned about a workshop on "Audio Description" offered by a local non-profit, Art Spark Texas, and about the need for Audio Description at live theater, he began volunteering with them.  It was a natural fit, as he'd already been volunteering as an usher for three Austin-area theaters for several years. 

In addition to his volunteer work, Luke also enjoys rock climbing in his retirement, as well as traveling and pickleball with his wife of 32 years.