Audio Description &
Accessibility Consultancy

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Sound description: Friendly voices exclaiming SoundScribe

Our Manifesto

We are a global majority collective of multi-disciplinary audio describers and consultants specialising in access for performance work, arts institutions and moving image.

Founded by audio describer and captioner, Elaine Lillian Joseph and co-led with dancer and choreographer, Shivaangee Agrawal, we are activists, allies and access workers.

Audio description can generate choreography or cinematography. It can focus meaning and intention. Our mission is to transform the creative process by positioning audio description as the catalyst for performance making.

"People are disabled by barriers in society.

We want to bruk down those barriers.

Liberation comes through reshaping our experience

with the world as it exists now.

Decentering sight as the primary way of accessing art,

dismantling the inherent ableism in that fixation,

and prioritising embodied, immersive experiences."

This is work we want to do forever, so we cultivate long-lasting, transformative relationships with our collaborators.

Our Work

Political Mother Unplugged: Dance

We provided the pre-recorded audio description for 'Political Mother Unplugged' and also recorded an audio booklet for future generations of dance pedagogues and students. Performed by 10 dancers, and accompanied by Hofesh’s cinematic score featuring a band of live drummers and electric guitarists, Political Mother packs a punch!

"Where there is pressure there is folkdance"

Photographer credit: Agathe Poupeney

Expanded Image Description: Fuzzy lines like white noise are projected onto a screen at the back of the stage. They stabilise to become the face of the Politician, his mouth bleating on. On the stage, a mob leap and sprint in a raucous, ragged circle. Their hands goad and conjure him, reaching up, fingers splayed. Lit from below, they appear as flickering embers in a wild fire.

Ima-Abasi Okon at Tate Britain: Art Exhibition

Okon's artworks include a modular ceiling inserted underneath the original. There are also two pairs of hand-crafted glass lights, filled with palm oil and Courvoisier VS cognac. Facing this ceiling are eleven industrial air conditioning units, which have been fixed to the walls. A slowed down audio track fills the room. The installation disturbs the architecture and formal atmosphere of Tate Britain.

The title of this description is ‘A Walk Through with an Audio Describer’.

[It] is delivered in the spirit of Ima-Abasi Okon’s works. After conversations with the artist, this attempts to centre the experience of the audio describer as curious spectator, tentative critic.

Listen to the AD

Photographer credit: Andy Keate

Expanded Image Description: Two ceiling lights. They’re handblown crystal cut glass and look like someone’s clamped two whisky tumblers rim side up. They fit close to the ceiling with no pendant. The crystal is intricate. It bears geometric shapes, diamond motifs around the sides, sun-ray patterns at the base with a raised point in the middle.

Inside is a golden-brown substance. The label tells me this is polished steel, LED lights, hand-blown lead crystal, palm oil, Courvoisier VS Cognac, 20.5 by 11 cm.

I Think We Should Start Over: Dance

A dance duet by Candoco Dance Company, in collaboration with award-winning choreographer Jamaal Burkmar. Beginning and ending with a candid conversation between two podcasters that verges on confrontational, the dancers muse on everything from the stars, the start of the universe and friendship. Along the way they connect and disconnect, communicating through articulated staccato gesticulations that are in time with the natural rhythm of spoken dialogue and song lyrics.

Dancers: Caroline Lofthouse and Maiya Leeke

"The pair move in arcing fluid lines, bowing their heads when they surge forward. The end of a phrase is punctuated by straight slanted arms flicked upwards, like rockets launching to the stars. Maiya aims a fist skyward, her gaze wistful, then lets her arm swing back down to earth."

Read the transcript here

Impact Driver: Performing Arts

Eve Stainton's choreographic commission, Impact Driver is interested in methodologies for constructing thriller-like suspense. Featuring live welding, movement, and live sound, scored by Leisha Thomas

and Mica Levi.

Elaine and Shivaangee designed the audio description as a 360-degree immersive experience, both voicing the AD live - sometimes in dialogue with each other, sometimes welding together separate perceptions. This was in honour of the highly immersive environment of the work, which invited audience members to roam freely through the space and take in the performance from different perspectives.

Photographer credit: Brian Hartley

Score inspired from the above image:

Smearing body parts, sliding limbs, wiping, grinding against
Red-hot sparks flying, painting the dark red, piss-red
Sparks sputtering, splattering, bouncing off floor like marbles
Slanting silhouettes looming, imposing, dominating, impressing upon the plastic wrap

On Audio Description. Elaine Lillian Joseph
and Sarah Hayden in Conversation

Elaine talks about her practice as an audio describer with writer and Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Southampton, Sarah Hayden from Voices in the Gallery (a research project about how voice, text and access intersect in contemporary art led by Sarah Hayden, a writer and Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Southampton). The discussion is fully captioned.

Listen to the conversation

On Audio Description. Elaine Lillian Joseph
and Thomas Reid in Conversation

Thomas Reid is a Blind podcaster who makes audio from the perspective of an advocate first. His objective is to help those new to vision loss navigate all aspects of the adjustment experience. He interviews Elaine on his radio show, Reid My Mind, digging into her AD origin story and the importance of centering Blind people in the process and creation of guidelines for describing race, color or ethnicity.

Listen to the conversation

Eve and Cain: Performing Arts

Sonny Nwachukwu's choreographic piece depicts the story of a mother and son as they journey through understanding the intersectionalities of being black, gay and disabled today, and explore the complexities of trying to understand these aspects of identity. ‘Eve and Cain’ is an honest dialogue about stammering and offers a rare exploration of communication disabilities.

Photographer credit: Jack Thomson

Expanded Image Description: Eve sits elevated and erect with Cain and Pepper sitting on the floor, on either side of her. Lovingly she looks down at her children, picks fluff from their hair and smooths it down. A hand placed possessively on each son. Finally she lifts her gaze and exudes deep peace.

Dancers

Eve played by Rudzani Moleya. Eve is a tall, slim black woman in her 40s. Her long locks of hair are wrapped in a red headscarf and she wears a green and crinkled short sleeve blouse over dark brown trousers.

Cain played by Newton Matthews. He is a black man in his 20s and wears a conservative brown outfit reminiscent of a pastor’s son. Cain has a stutter and is untangling his relationship with Christianity.

Pepper played by Luke Elliott. He has brown skin and a large black afro that’s slicked back into a bun. He wears a patterned shirt and khaki trousers

It Begins In Darkness: Dance

Seke Chimutengwende’s choreographic piece, It Begins in Darkness is a stark, stripped back 60-minute performance. Five dancers or ghosts move through mysterious and experimental rites of passage, channelling past, present and future tensions through their bodies and voices. We created a printed and audio booklet which offers an elaborated experience of the show and its making, including exclusive interviews and expanded commentaries on the soundscape.

An extract:

Mayowa and Ming come to life,

arms curving and twisting in the air.

Soft undulations; a current charging through them,

like those dancing inflatables outside a petrol station.

Sending them into soft ripples,

whole body swelling and dipping in, ever closer proximity,

as if propelled through water.

And as they edge right to left,

their ripples mirror and repel each other.

Now towards the centre, the gap between them is closing,

Ming’s arms pulse near Mayowa’s midriff,

A hand brushes her thigh,

Her pale pink trousers.

Until… in a moment, they are connected.

Ming’s arms wrapped around Mayowa waist,

Mayowa hunched over, not fully committed.

In a fleeting embrace,

Their rippling quelled,

Mayowa thuds to the floor.

Gucci Equilibrium Impact Report: Fashion

Powered by collaboration and innovation, the 2022 Gucci Equilibrium Impact Report is a testament to Gucci's conviction to generate positive, sustainable change for people and the planet. We provided audio described introductions to Gucci Equilibrium's short trailers in consultation with Quiplash.

An extract: "Gucci’s iconic leather handbag, 0633. It’s clutch-sized, curvaceous like a horse’s saddle, brown with a patent finish and topped with a curved bamboo handle and a matching twist lock closure."

We provided audio description in English, Spanish (LatAm) and Italian.

Buttercup: Moving Image

Buttercup focuses on the poetics of language interacting with image through the accessibility tool of audio description. Buttercup focuses on a particular photograph of a child, pictured wearing a Communion dress on her father’s farm. Still and barely-moving images are used to unspool thoughts around human and bovine domestication, desire, disability, abolition and wildness.

Buttercup is made in close collaboration with composer David Donohoe, and in consultation with an assembled forum of blind and visually impaired users.

Photographer credit: 16mm film still by Sarah Browne

Expanded Image Description: A square photograph with buttercup heads covering three faces.

Extract: An explosion of blurred monochromatic ghost plant matter race by until they’re replaced with a tight closeup of calves, dipping their black and white heads into a feeder, small tagged ears waggling arrhythmically

The SoundScribe Tribe

Co-founder

Elaine Lillian Joseph

Elaine is a Black British woman born and raised in Birmingham. Her heritage hails from the West Indies by way of Jamaica and St Kitts. Elaine is an audio describer, captioner and linguist and is committed to making SoundScribe a community-centred collective. Elaine is a black woman in her thirties with a light brown complexion. Her hair is in beaded kanerows and she's in a black dress, smiling the biggest smile.

Co-founder

Shivaangee Agrawal

Shivaangee is an independent dance artist from London, working at the intersection of choreography, community and research. As a trained audio describer and co-founder of SoundScribe, Shivaangee is passionate about the complexity of access work; it can be easy to renew existing hierarchies even within our intentions to broaden participation. Shivaangee smiles broadly in black dungarees over a sparkly gold blouse.

Business and Strategy Consultant

Dr Natasha Punia

A queer woman from Leicester/London with South Asian heritage, is a Business and Strategy Consultant in Social Impact and Health. Managing a chronic illness, she's passionate about transforming businesses to be more inclusive. Her mission extends to empowering others to view their chronic illness as a unique superpower. Natasha is of South Asian heritage in her mid 30s. She has a low fringe and curly black hair that tumbles over her shoulders. She smiles with one hand on her hip and her other hand is holding a coffee takeaway cup. She's in a multicoloured jacket with a geometric pattern.

Our Services

Audio Description

We specialise in film, exhibitions and performance work

Touch Tours

Fancy a tour behind the scenes of a play, a dance show or an exhibition?

Access Workshops

We teach alt-text, web accessibility and demystify the audio describer

Conferences

We present our work and methods, advocacy and industry innovations

Access Resources

We produce large print graphic-designed booklets and audio booklets

Consultancy

Bring us in from the beginning to advise on audio description options

New clients receive a free 20 minute phone consultation.

Get in Touch

Audio described introductions

From England with Love by Hofesh Shechter, Southbank Centre, London, April 19th

Audio Description & Accessibility Consultancy

Our Manifesto

Our Work

Political Mother Unplugged: Dance

The SoundScribe Tribe

Co-founder

Elaine Lillian Joseph

Co-founder

Shivaangee Agrawal

Business and Strategy Consultant

Dr Natasha Punia

Our Services

Audio Description

Touch Tours

Access Workshops

Conferences

Access Resources

Consultancy

Get in Touch

Audio described introductions

Upcoming Events

Audio Description &
Accessibility Consultancy