ABSTRACT
The increasing availability of online video content, partially fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing presence of social media, adds to the importance of providing audio descriptions as a media alternative to video content for blind and visually impaired persons. To address concerns as to what can be sufficiently described, we developed a concept providing audio descriptions in three levels of detail. We included an additional feature for providing optional explanations to terms and abbreviations, helping users without specific knowledge or persons with neurodiversity in comprehending complex video content. We implemented these features in a prototype based on the open-source Able Player, using an XML-based data structure to store information for all layers of audio descriptions. A qualitative user test focused on the benefits of multi-layered audio descriptions and optional explanatory content. Findings suggest that the choice on several levels of detail is received positively by users. They also appreciated the concept of optional explanations and came up with further use cases for such a practice. Participants preferred a higher level of detail for a high-paced action video and a lower level for informative content. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.