Journal of Audiovisual Translation Special Issue

Audio description in a changing world: Emerging technologies, new contexts and applications

Closed Call

Guest editors: Sarah Anne McDonagh, Kathryn Locke, Katie Ellis, Mike Kent, Kari Seeley.

Emerging technologies are rapidly transforming our world, challenging established norms and creating new opportunities to work, learn and socialise. Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence and blockchain have already impacted the labour market, reshape how tasks are performed and redefine traditional job roles. At the same time, these new technologies raise important ethical questions about data governance, the privacy and security of personal information, as well as the broader social and environmental implications of their use (Schwartz et al., 2020, p. 59; Strubell et al., 2019; Bender et al. 2021). 

In the field of audio description (AD), these emerging technologies have elicited both enthusiasm and concern. While some view these emerging technologies as catalysts for innovation, others express concerns over their potential to diminish the value of human creativity and job satisfaction. Translation studies have explored similar concerns of emerging technologies with machine translation (Shterionov & Vanmassenhove, 2023) and job satisfaction (Moorkens, 2024). However, the technological, ethical, social and environmental implications of these emerging technologies for audio describers, access service providers and end users remain largely unexplored in AD research. 

At the same time, these technological advancements go hand in hand with rapid changes in the AD landscape, characterised by new audience demands and by diverse contexts shaping its future. From innovative applications across the arts sector, to the uptake of AD in the gaming industry, AD is considered and applied in new and diverse ways. Moreover, the use of AD by audiences beyond the blind and low vision community is offering new insights and challenges for the AD industry. This special issue seeks to explore these themes, drawing insights from a global community of AD researchers, practitioners and end users affiliated with the 2025 Advanced Research Seminar on Audio Description (ARSAD) and the 2024 Audio Description Symposium in Australia.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 

  • Emerging technologies in AD.
  • Emerging technologies and creativity in AD. 
  • 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 and the use of emerging technologies. 
  • Artificial Intelligence and AD.
  • Immersive environments and the metaverse.
  • Blockchain and copyright.
  • Training audio describers.
  • Standardisation and policymaking.
  • Ethical aspects of the use of emerging technologies in AD.
  • Disability and emerging technologies. 
  • End user perspectives on AI. 
  • Changing AD audiences.
  • Opportunities in education.
  • Innovation in the Arts
  • New locations for AD.

References

Moorkens, J., & Arenas, A. G. (2024). Artificial intelligence, automation and the language industry. In Handbook of the Language Industry: Context, Resources and Profiles (pp. 71–97). De Gruyter.

Shterionov, D. and Vanmassenhove, E. (2023). The Ecological Footprint of Neural Machine Translation Systems. In Towards Responsible Machine Translation: Ethical and Legal Considerations in Machine Translation (pp. 185–213). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG.

Strubell, E., Ganesh, A., & McCallum, A. (2019). Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP. Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 3645–3650.

Important dates

  • Submission date of full papers: 30 June 2025.
  • First round of review completed: 31 October 2025.
  • Revised papers submitted: 31 January 2026.
  • Second round of review completed: Mid March 2026.
  • Submission of final versions: Mid April 2026.
  • Language revision, APA, layout: April-October 2026.
  • Publication of the issue: December 2026.

This is a closed call that is only open to speakers from the ARSAD conference and the 2024 Audio Description Symposium.

Manuscripts should be submitted through the website of JAT, following the journal’s author guidelines.

If you have questions, please contact the guest editors via  Sarah Anne McDonagh <SarahAnne.Mcdonagh@uab.cat> or the JAT editorial team via editors@jatjournal.org