ABOUT ARSAD 2027

Information about ARSAD 2027 will be posted here in April 2026.

ABOUT ARSAD 2025

ARSAD 2025 theme was “Creativity in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence: audio description in a changing world”. Please check the call for papers for a special issue.

The ARSAD (Advanced Research Seminar on Audio Description) community met 19, 20 and 21 March 2025 in Barcelona and celebrated its 10thanniversary.

ARSAD started in 2007 as a small-scale seminar with around 25 participants interested in what was an innovative practice and research topic. Since then, ARSAD has expanded and has become the international reference conference for audio description. Every two years a welcoming community of researchers, industry representatives, trainers, trainees, users, practitioners, regulators, broadcasters, policy makers, social activists, cultural managers, and anyone interested in audio description (AD) meet to take stock of the past, present and, most importantly, future of this access service. 

Generative Artificial Intelligence has exploded onto the scene and has provoked both excitement and rejection. Seen by some as a transformative force and by others as a potential devaluation of human creativity, ARSAD 2025 explored the topic with an open and critical mind. We invited Sabine Braun, from Surrey University, to discuss the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Audio Description in her keynote talk to learn more about the opportunities and challenges it poses.

For ARSAD 2025 we also teamed up with the WEL project (From written to oral texts in Easy Language: easy audios in cultural visits and video games), led by TransMedia Catalonia, to study innovative access services inspired by audio description which may cater for new audiences, including neurodiverse users. 

The ARSAD community was invited to submit abstracts for presentations that address a wide array of themes from diverse perspectives and backgrounds which included but were not limited to:

  • AD experiences across the globe in diverse formats and environments, from live to recorded events, from video games to opera, from traditional broadcasting to streaming platforms.
  • AD business models and workflows: creation and translation, automatization, new distribution systems.
  • Technologies in audio description.
  • Training audio describers.
  • Using audio description as a training tool.
  • Audio introductions, touch tours, audio subtitling.
  • User-generated audio descriptions.
  • AD translation.
  • Historical approaches to AD.
  • AD delivery: prosody and voicing.
  • Easy-to-understand language and AD.
  • Immersive environments and the metaverse.
  • Blockchain and copyright.
  • AD in minority languages.
  • Standardisation and policy-making.
  • User involvement and ethical aspects.
  • Green and sustainable AD.
  • Audio subtitling and AD-related access services.
  • Accessible filmmaking and creativity in AD.