The world of audio description is still new and it can be hard to know how to break into the field, for anyone wanting to write it or engineer/mix it or voice it, even do quality control on it. As we’ve said, it’s all a collaborative process or should be anyway.

On this week’s episode we welcomed author and audio description writer Kelly Evans for a frank discussion on how she got into this work and how audio description and related accessibility are showing up in more and more places, even as many still get it mixed up with closed captioning, and how something that helps the blind can also be handy for anyone. There’s still no real set of standards and so AD production requires devoted parties at all levels.

Evans has gone from working in project management and IT, in investment banking and in museums over in England, and back here in Canada writing historical novels, being an expert in the black death and plagues in general. She writes about historical women, in the renaissance period, requiring lots of research. These skills transfer over into how she moved into doing AD script writing which also requires plenty of research into the subject matter of any show needing description. We talk about the value of feedback and including the blind community in the collaborative process for the audio description to be the best it can be. Kelly, as a writer herself, she knows why quality matters and how valuable feedback is.

This latest guest on Outlook is a Canadian writer of audio description Kerry met in a Facebook group for those doing just such work, an excellent place to go to for like-minded people striving to describe shows, films, plays, and so much more as time goes on and the AD industry continues to evolve.

To continue the ongoing discussion on audio description, join the Facebook group where Kerry and Kelly met here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AudioDescriptionDiscussion

And check out Kelly's writing on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Evans/e/B0187JGTOQ