Exploring the Use of Narration for Audio Description in Enhancing Blind and Visually Impaired Children's Visualization of Video Movie Films

• Main Author: Shadiqin Binti Firdus, Shadiqin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2012
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6465/1/ICT_SHADIQIN%20BINTI%20FIRDAUS.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6465/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Watching movie or television is always a challenge for the blind and visually impaired people because most of the scenes are not verbally described in order to give the full view of the program content. This has narrowed the opportunity of the blind and visually impaired people to access interactive leaming in order to acquire knowledge and skills for independent living. The developed experimental model of Audio Video Describer (AVD) that uses Bahasa Malaysia and English short cartoon movie film with the integrated narration is believed to assist the blind and visually impaired children to experience movie film. Data resulted from a survey containing ten questions on perceptions in the form of Likert scale rated from I being stongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree. Comments and feedback were gathered through interview from the respondents after each stage of AVD developed. Based on the analysis of the evaluation results of first draft of AVD, second draft of AVD was developed and the evaluation was repeated to determine the effectiveness of the AVD model. The final AVD models were tested on normal sighted students, six visually impaired adults and also on the blind and visually impaired children. The key findings from the analysis showed that the language, voice, pitch and timing used for the audio description are suitable. This indicates that the AVD potentially can assist the blind and visually impaired children to experience and to enjoy the movie film. With the use of AVD, it can result in minimal help from the normal people to describe the movie for them.