Audio description is an accessibility service used by blind or visually impaired individuals. Often accompanying movies, television shows, and other visual art forms, the service provides spoken descriptions of visual content, allowing people with vision loss the ability to access information that sighted people obtain visually. At live theatrical events, audio description provides spoken descriptions of scenes, characters, props, and other visual elements that those with vision loss may otherwise find inaccessible. This paper explores a novel approach to automate the creation and deployment of audio description for repeatable live theatrical events, both musical and non-musical. Using readily available tools and established sound-processing techniques, we describe a framework to automate several aspects of audio description for theater. The method uses a reference audio recording and an online time warping algorithm to align audio description with live performances, including a process for handling unexpected interruptions. We also show how a reference audio recording and descriptive tracks can be generated automatically from a show’s script and used to facilitate the deployment of audio description without sufficient resources for multiple performances or a live audio describer. Finally, a software implementation that is integrated into an existing theatrical workflow is also described. This system is used in three evaluation experiments that show the method successfully aligns multiple recordings of works of musical theater and non-musical plays in order to automatically trigger pre-recorded, descriptive audio in real time.

音频描述是盲人或视障人士使用的无障碍服务。该服务通常伴随着电影，电视节目和其他视觉艺术形式，提供视觉内容的口头描述，从而使有视力障碍的人能够访问视力正常的人获得的信息。在现场戏剧活动中，音频描述会提供场景，角色，道具和其他视觉元素的口头描述，否则视力障碍者可能无法访问。本文探讨了一种新颖的方法，可以自动创建和部署可重复的现场戏剧事件（包括音乐和非音乐）的音频描述。使用现成的工具和已建立的声音处理技术，我们描述了一种框架，用于自动化剧院音频描述的多个方面。该方法使用参考音频记录和在线时间扭曲算法来将音频描述与现场表演对齐，包括处理意外中断的过程。我们还将展示如何从节目的脚本中自动生成参考音频记录和描述性曲目，并在没有足够资源来进行多场演出或现场音频描述者的情况下，用于参考音频描述的部署。最后，还描述了集成到现有戏剧工作流程中的软件实现。该系统用于三个评估实验中，表明该方法成功地对齐了音乐剧和非音乐剧作品的多个录音，以便实时自动触发预先录制的描述性音频。