How My Work in Accessibility Services Made Me a Better Writer
Imagine you are on a road trip with a friend who is blind. Together you drive up a steep mountain road, twisting around horseshoe curves to arrive at the summit. What you see makes you gasp. Your friend asks, “What is it? What happened?”
Or imagine you are watching a movie or play and suddenly everyone in the audience bursts into laughter. Your friend leans over and whispers “Why is everyone laughing?” How do you describe what you see?
I answer these questions for a living. I provide accessibility services as an Audio Describer.
Audio description provides access to people who are blind or partially sighted by filling in visual elements and details that a person cannot perceive. In the first scenario above, a person hears the gasp but has no context. Is their friend gasping in horror, surprise, or awe? Is there a dead deer in the road? A clear cut where once there was a forest? A panorama of snow-capped mountains stretching for hundreds of miles? Audio description informs people of what happened for comprehension, fills in visual details for enjoyment, and includes them in the experience in real time, so they can react to the joke or drama along with everyone else.
I have worked in accessibility services and advocacy for twenty-five years. Recently I realized that the skills and habits I cultivated for my work have made me a better writer.
Writers are encouraged to pen descriptions that involve all five senses. At first blush, audio description may appear to only concern visual details; but because of the audience we serve, tactile imagery is vital. The feel of building materials, food, and fabric conveys tone and mood. The perception of objects and color can be described in terms of taste or smell to engage those senses beyond the visual. What’s more poetic than that?
When describing the visual elements of a show, Audio Describers only talk between lines of dialogue or song lyrics, so we don’t overlap the performer/speaker. Often there are only a few seconds to insert the information necessary for understanding and an enriched experience. This means choosing a concise, illustrative, and accurate description. The form is like haiku or micro or flash, where every word counts. Haiku is the only poetry form I write because I find the constraint of 17 syllables freeing. Oxymoron that may be, yet the limitation forces me to distill descriptions and emotions to the essence of what I want to convey. That is precisely what an Audio Describer does for an audience. How few words can you use to capture the moment?
Audio Describers, like writers, must be observant and good listeners. I listen for more than information, absorbing a speaker’s cadence and rhythm while noting their word choice. I observe people’s body language to detect when their physicality doesn’t match the words they speak. This improved my dialogue and where I place it in a piece.
Possessing a strong vocabulary is essential for both arts. Like writers, Audio Describers must choose the right word, with the strongest connotation, denotation, and rhythm for the moment. Audio describing period plays and films expanded my vocabulary of terminology for clothing, architecture, weapons, and furnishings. It also helped me determine when I needed to provide further clarification for uncommon terms, like farthingale or polearm.
I am also an Open Captioner for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Open captioning provides a text display of all the words and sounds heard during a live event, similar to the closed captioning on your TV, but open since everyone in the audience sees it (talk about pressure). This service also necessitates being a good listener, because we display the text verbatim—allowing for dropped lines and conveying speaker emphasis. We also depict sound effects and noises. Again creativity, a strong vocabulary, and good research skills are needed. As with audio description, the word choice must be concise and descriptive. “Engine rumbling” is good but “B-52 engine rumbling” is better.
Sometimes the sound issues from the performer. When I trained with Carol Meers of c2 (Caption Coalition), we worked on a Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play in which Br’er Rabbit is a character with no scripted lines, but plenty to say through non-human sounds. Carol and I conferred and decided that the actor’s sounds were best described as “chittering”—much stronger than “making indistinguishable noises.” The actor was delighted.
Another important aspect of audio description that improved my writing is giving the reader credit by allowing them to make discoveries for themselves, without interpreting for them and potentially patronizing them. Writing “it was scary” is not only dull, but doesn’t let the reader experience what is happening to warrant being classified as “scary.” I’ve learned to let the scene, rather than the author, tell the story.
The audio description field has strong opinions on adverbs. Who doesn’t? I agree with Henry James that, “Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.” (I tend to like a bit too much sugar.) Mark Twain quipped, “If you see an adverb, kill it.” While I do not condone total adverbicide, the time limitations inherent in audio description forced me to replace adverbs with stronger verbs. To limit adverbs, try this exercise I use in my audio description training courses. Get something to write with and set a timer for one minute. In that minute, write down as many synonyms (verbs only) for the verb “walk” that you can. Kill the adverbs. “Walk slowly” is cheating. Ready? Go.
How many words did you come up with?
Why not use “walk slowly” you ask. What is to “walk slowly”? One word like creep, slink, sneak, wander, or skulk could replace the boring “walk slowly” depending on the context. I am a hunter seeking the precise verb to convey an actor’s movement quality and that quest transferred to my writing.
My work helped me understand more about the obstacles people with accessibility needs face every day, and I still have much to learn. The rewards of providing access and inclusion continue to overwhelm me—a patron hugs me and cries because she can now enjoy live theatre with her family, excited students from the State School for the Blind swarm around me to feel the costume fabrics I bring them in a touch tour, elderly opera fans renew their season tickets because I read the supertitles to them. The unanticipated bonus is that my writing became more inviting and precise, with author and reader sharing the discoveries along the journey.
About Diane Englert
Diane Englert is a writer, accessibility consultant, and provider of audio description and open captioning services. Her writing appears in Ruminate Magazine, From the Depths, What Rough Beast, Hash Journal, We’ll Never Have Paris, and Nanoism, among others. She recently finished her first middle grade novel. Diane worked in theater as a director, producer, dramaturg, actor, and wrote libretto for several mini musicals that have all been produced. Diane loves coffee and her family, who say she makes The Best Banana Bread. Her bite is worse than her bark. Find her on Instagram @signeddiane.
