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Audio Description is art. There. I said it! I’m in the camp of describers whose end goal is not legal compliance or the mythical, and frankly impossible, “accessible for everyone” status. The camp I’m in is interested in elevating an artwork by adding description. “Accessible” isn’t a very delightful sounding goal anyway. What if the goal included being pleasurable, immersive, creative, delightful, filled with detail and feeling, and things that focus on experience, not avoiding lawsuits or increasing ticket sales? If any of that sounds nice to you, I hope you’ll check out a new exhibition at Concordia University’s Access in the Making Lab (AIM Lab) online.

Thomas Reid is the producer and host of Reid My Mind Radio, Audio Description narrator, and audio editor. I had the ridiculously good fortune to team up with him to facilitate a workshop in 2021 for the AIM Lab called Audio Description in the Making. We started with questions: What if Audio Description was an artistic practice instead of an add-on? Wait. What if Audio Description was the artistic practice?

So! Students gathered with us. They chose artworks to describe and then more or less scrapped the original art. They made new works of art based on the description of the first set. We wanted to put AD at the center, make it the focal point of the creation and the storytelling. The Access in the Making Lab was the ideal place to experiment with AD, work collaboratively, and play. The students come from very diverse backgrounds, identities, and life experiences, and they brought that to their work. Because you can when the goal is not compliance and following rigid style guides, but negotiation, exploration, and deeply engaging artistic practice together.

If people from a wide variety of backgrounds who use access features are planners, organizers, quality control checkers, and designers of the media and events, I think it’s endlessly exciting and invigorating. Everyone has different tastes, wants, and needs coming to this work. I hope that you find enjoyment in checking out the Audio Description in the Making artworks and maybe play around with creating something yourself. I mean, at the beginning of the workshop Thomas had me audio describe a song. Yes, a song, not a music video. My own music video unfolded in my head as it played, and I told him the story that I saw. I can still feel the warm sand between my toes, hear the ocean waves rushing, sense the setting sun’s last rays tingling on my skin from that imagined, if not very cliché, music video. I don’t recall the song months later, but my breathing slows down and my shoulders drop when I take myself back to that impromptu beach that no one knew beforehand I would be visiting. Where else can creative Audio Description take us?

Check it out at AudioDescription.AccessInTheMaking.ca.