Instructions for Project Participants

This page was designed for participants in the Washington State Audio Description Project (WSADP). For information about the project, see the Project home page.

Before You Begin

1. Reach out to the owners of videos and/or relevant websites at your institution, and work collaboratively with those individuals. Prioritizing videos, and adding audio description to them, will likely be a team effort involving many stakeholders.
2. Review our Overview of Audio Description.
3. Review the Supported Videos section below.
4. With members of your team, prioritize your videos.

Supported Videos

For the current project, all videos must meet the following conditions:

• Must be a public-facing video.
• Must not be a video where audio description is needed for an individual seeking an accommodation. Accommodation requests for audio description must be met by the institution.
• Must be no longer than 20 minutes.
• Must not be urgent. Description from either CIDI or 3PlayMedia is expected to take up to 7-10 business days.

NOTE: Funding for the project is limited, and is only available now through mid-June 2021 (or as funding lasts). There is no guarantee that we'll be able to describe all videos that are submitted through the project.

To Submit a Video for Description

Please submit videos to be described via the WSADP Audio Description Request Form. The form is designed to handle one video at a time. It is ok to submit multiple videos in one session, but we will only process them one at a time, in the order in which you submitted them, in order to ensure the available funds are distributed fairly across project participants. Please submit your highest priority videos first.

The form will ask you for the following information:

Your Contact Information

• Your name
• Your institution
• Your email address
• Your phone number

About the Video

• Title
• Duration (hours:minutes:seconds)
• Brief explanation of how you chose this video as a high priority for description.
• Preferred approach for audio description (the three choices are described in our Overview of Audio Description).
• Do you think extended description will be required? (extended description is defined at the top of our Overview of Audio Description).
• Which of the following best describes the voice of the primary speaker(s) in the video? (see section below on Selecting a Voice for Description).
• Where can we access the video? (see section below on Making Your Videos Available for Description).
• Specialized instructions (see section below Providing Specialized Instructions).
• Additional information

NOTE: We reserve the right to override your choices for preferred approach. If that's necessary, we'll contact you first to discuss why we feel that's necessary.

Selecting a Voice for Description

The purpose of this question on the form is to ensure contrast between the voice used for audio description and the voices heard in the video. Choices are:

• High pitched voice(s)
• Low pitched voice(s)
• A variety of voices, both low and high pitched
• Not applicable (little or no spoken audio)

Making Your Videos Available for Description

On the Audio Description Request Form, you will be asked "Where can we access the video?". If the video is available at a public URL, simply provide the URL to the video file. If additional instructions are required, please provide those instructions on the form. Note the following additional instructions for each of the three approaches:

• Traditional audio description vendor: CIDI is capable of handling YouTube and Vimeo URLs, but their preference is for direct access to an MP4 video file.
• Caption vendor, with audio description as add-on: 3PlayMedia can handle video in most common formats, including YouTube and Vimeo URLs (as long as they're either public or unlisted). To be sure your video file format is supported, see 3PlayMedia's list of Supported Formats and Codecs.

Providing Specialized Instructions

Use this question on the form to add instructions for the audio description service providers. This is optional, but important to include if you think it will help them to describe the content accurately. Examples of instructions to consider including:

• Pronunciation of names that appear in on-screen text (e.g., "Über" is pronounced "oo-ber")
• Pronoun preferences of people who appear in the video if known
• Names of important places or landmarks

Instructions for Audio Description Using "Timed Text"

If your preferred approach is "Timed text, for delivery in Able Player", our expectation is that you will be creating your own timed text file. We won't be doing that for you. Therefore, we don't need access to the video (simply enter "Not applicable" in response to the question "Where can we access the video?")

We're asking if you prefer this approach for two reasons:

1. We'd love to know you're doing that!
2. We want to help. If you choose this option, we'll reach out to see what questions you have about the process, either of creating the Timed Text file or of setting up Able Player on your websites.