Audio description symbol (AD)

How to read it

Audio description is the narration of a programme’s visual elements. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines it for television as audio-narrated descriptions of a program’s key visual elements, inserted into natural pauses in the dialogue, and its rules on described TV programmes are at 47 CFR § 79.3. The Graphic Artists Guild’s symbol, the letters AD followed by sound waves, marks performing arts, visual arts, television, video and film that offer live commentary or narration by a trained audio describer, heard through headphones and a small transmitter.

Also searched as: AD on TV, AD symbol, audio description, described video symbol.

Audio description or video description?

The two names have meant different things. In 1997 Geoff Freed of the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media wrote that there was no standard symbol for description yet, and that the field was moving toward “video description” for films on tape, on the web or in the cinema, and “audio description” for live events such as plays or opera. The FCC now uses audio description for television.

Where you’ll see it

On television, in theatres and in museums. The FCC points to listings of described programmes kept by consumer organisations, and to cable and satellite providers’ own pages on their description services. Stanford University’s guide to access symbols explains that on television the description comes through the Secondary Audio Program (SAP) of a stereo TV. Its set has a second symbol for live description at a theatre performance or a museum exhibition, a letter A over vertical hatching; the Guild’s set has one AD symbol for both.

Look-alikes

The CC symbol is the matching service the other way round: captions give the sound as text for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, where AD gives the picture as speech.