  Audio description, a form of trans-modal media translation, allows people who
are blind or visually impaired access to visually-oriented, socio-cultural, or
historical public discourse alike. Although audio description has gained more
prominence in media policy and research lately, it rarely has been studied
empirically. Yet this paper presents quantitative and qualitative survey data
on its challenges and opportunities, through the analysis of responses from 483
participants in a national sample, with 334 of these respondents being blind.
Our results give insight into audio description use in broadcast TV, streaming
services, for physical media, such as DVDs, and in movie theaters. We further
discover a multiplicity of barriers and hindrances which prevent a better
adoption and larger proliferation of audio description. In our discussion, we
present a possible answer to these problems - the UniDescription Project - a
media ecosystem for the creation, curation, and dissemination of audio
description for multiple media platforms.
