Hello lovely people! Greetings from Hobart, where I'm the Accessibility Project Coordinator for Mona (the Museum of Old and New Art) and its festivals.
We're investigating providing audio description for a contemporary dance performance for Mona Foma 2024 and I'm looking around to see what equipment is being used in venues and organisations.
Audio description is fairly new in Tasmania but there is demand in our blind community especially. A group of six performing and visual arts professionals, including me, are being trained and mentored by experienced describer Clare Spillman, who originally trained and worked in the UK.
If anyone has insights into the best equipment for description, I'd love to hear your thoughts! The performance in 2024 will be in a 750 seat theatre. The largest indoor performance venue in Tasmania is a 5,500 person arena.
Hello Olivia!
I work at Broadway Rose Theatre Company in Tigard, Oregon in the States and I echo what Laura said. We use Listen Technologies transmitters and receivers for our assistive listening devices and our sound technician programed a special channel for descriptive audio on our ALDs. Basically, the user with the ALD receiver can switch to the descriptive audio channel and hear my voice describing the events on stage live. Our patrons can use a headset or a special t-coil induction loop if they have hearing aids enabled with T-coil technology.
Let me know if you have any questions. So glad your company is looking into offering Audio Description!
Thanks so much Brooke! Listen Technologies seems to be the standard of equipment in Australia (at least in the big performance venues I've spoken to interstate) and it's really useful to know what's getting used and what works out there!