How E-books Speak Through Images. Audio Description in the World of Digital Books

Audio Description – What Is It?

Audio description (AD, also referred to as a video description, described video, or visual description) is a technique which facilitates the accessibility of visual content for blind and visually impaired individuals. It means adding narration describing important visual elements – scenes, action setting, characters’ appearance, facial expressions, gestures, changes in scenery, writings on screen – everything that can’t be conveyed solely through dialogue and sound. This narration is injected into natural pauses between dialogues and other important sounds, so that it doesn’t collide with the main audio track.

 Can Audio Description Be Used in Ebooks?

Ebooks are by definition a text format which should be fully legible for blind individuals (e.g. using a speech synthesiser or the braille alphabet). Where is audio description needed then? In all places which contain important graphic elements: illustrations, photographs, graphs, maps, covers or – in the case of comic books – the whole visual layer. Visually impaired people often skip such content or can only grasp them in a limited way. In such cases, audio description can complete an ebook’s text with picture descriptions so that a blind reader can “imagine” everything that sighted people see in illustrations. In other words, it saves the same purpose as alternative text (alt text) in digital publications but in the form of attractive narration. Moreover, audio description in audiobooks will be useful not only for completely blind individuals. Visually impaired readers, people with dyslexia or elderly people may benefit from an additional audio or verbal description. This kind of soundtrack or description can provide a more immersive experience – something like a radio play or an audiobook containing elements which are not included in the verbal layer of the book. Therefore, audio description in ebooks becomes a bridge between a book and an audiobook and, most importantly, an accessibility tool.

 And What About the Technical Side?

 Ebooks containing multimedia – EPUB3 files and other supporting multimedia can contain audio, pictures, and even synchronised audio + text elements. In this context, audio description can be implemented as:

• Picture descriptions – alternative text (alt text) and more complex description for static images. This is a basic component of accessibility.

• Media rooted in an ebook – audio or video fragments rooted in an ebook can contain a descriptive audio track or a separate layer of description if the format and reader serve it. – Audio-only ebooks – audio formats with text navigation and synchronisation (e.g. EPUB3 from Media Overlays or files compatible with DAISY). They enable adding a visual description layer – the narrator describes illustrations, graphs or other visual elements when needed.

Examples of Audio Description Being Used in Ebooks

Even though the topic is only just gaining attention, you can already find real examples of e-books with audio description both in Poland and around the world. They usually concern publications in which images play a large part – such as comics or children's books.

Poland has been one of the pioneers in this area. In 2022, the antology ”Somwhere Beneath the Surface” („Gdzieś pod powierzchnią”) was published. It was probably the first comic book in Poland with full audio descriptiom. The publication contains six short fantasy comics to which narrative description of each frame were added. The Project was created as a part of the Zapomniane Sny (Forgotten Dreams) initiative and was available as a charity ebook (charityware) to be downloaded free of charge.

Interestingly, the anthology is available in two formats: a PDF combining the original drawings with audio descriptions, and an ePub containing only the text lahyer (descriptions) as a version for the visually impaired. The descriptions were prepared by dedicated audio descriptors, and the entire process was consulted with accessibility experts.

The success of this experiment encouraged the creators to continue. In June 2025, on exactly the same day when European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force, the next accessible anthology was published – “Machineries” (“Maszynerie”). Just like its predecessor, it contains some short science-fiction comics which can be read both in the traditional graphic form and “translated” into description form.

Audio comic books abroad

It is worth metioning that similar ideas were budding abroad. In 2016, Guy Hasson, an Israeli entrepreneur, launched the Comics Empower platform – an online shop with audio comic books for the blind. Hasson noticed that even though audiobook  versions of novel existed, Marvel or DC fans didn’t have their counterparts available without vision. Comics Empowered offered original adaptations of audio-comics where a narrator (often just one actor) read the text in the bubbles and described pictures in detail, frame by frame, page by page. This type of narration differs from audio superproductions - instead of many actors and effects straight from a radio play, the focus here is on faithfully reproducing the atmosphere of reading a comic book on your own. As Hasson recalls, many readers preferred this style because it resembled the reader's "voice in the head" and retained the comic book character of the story. In addition to its own productions, Comics Empower also made available audio comics from other companies, such as AudioComics and GraphicAudio, which had previously tried their hand at this niche. The American market has also experimented with one-shot projects. Marvel Comics, the publisher of popular superhero comics, released an audio adaptation of the first issue of the Daredevil series in 2011. (Symbolically, the protagonist of this series is blind.) The audio version read dialogue and descriptions based on the original comic book strip. Unfortunately, it lacked a free audio description of the graphics – the narrator simply provided what was written in the script for the artist, thus missing many of the nuances of the illustrations. However, this experience has shown publishers the potential of the new medium. Work is currently underway to standardize the Comic Book Description (CDD) method so that in the future, more graphic novels can be made available in audio format without losing the visual character of the original.

 Picture Books and Children’s Literature

Another area where audio description in e-books finds application is in illustrated children's books. Small children often learn to read by looking at colorful pictures in books – which poses a barrier for blind children. Parents try to describe illustrations in words, but they can't always convey their content in a way that's engaging and understandable to children. The Imagination Videobooks initiative was created with this problem in mind. This American non-profit foundation creates accessible digital picture books by adding professionally recorded voice-overs to the original illustrations and audio descriptions describing the images. Moreover, these materials also include subtitles and ASL translation, so that deaf children can fully participate in the story. The end result is something between an ebook and an animated film: a so-called videobook, a book read aloud with sound and descriptions, often available as a video recording. The originator of Imagination Videobooks is audiobook narrator Richard Rieman, who noticed that automatic speech synthesizers reading text are not enough to engage the youngest audiences. “ Today, everything can be listened to with a computer voice on a device, but we try to give children a real audio experience and make them love literature from the age of 3-5.”, says Rieman. Since 2020, the organization has adapted over 100 books (including classics like Winnie the Pooh), obtaining permission from the authors to make these special editions available free of charge. Access to them is free.

Importantly, videobooks by Imagination Videobooks are promoted as entertainment for all children, not just those with disabilities. This allows blind children to engage with the world of books on an equal footing with their sighted peers, while also sensitizing sighted children to the needs of their peers with disabilities.

In a world where multimedia e-books (with embedded movies, animations or soundtracks) are becoming increasingly popular, adding an audio description track is a natural complement ensuring full accessibility. One could imagine, for example, a graphic novel that, in addition to traditional stills, would also feature an optional audio commentary describing the plot's background or character appearances—something akin to the "director's commentary" seen on DVD releases, but serving inclusive purposes. While such ideas are still a work in progress, their implementation is becoming increasingly likely.

Adding an audio layer to the text layer is a qualitative leap that is often compared to the transition from radio to television – suddenly a completely new dimension of communication is added.

Summing up, audio description in e-books is a niche but very promising development  area for digital books. It has the potential to become a standard for accessible publications in the future, and perhaps even a new form of expression. The key here will be technical solutions (formats, applications) and publishers' willingness to invest in an additional layer of narrative. If these conditions are met, the answer to the question of whether and how to use audio description in e-books will be clear: use it creatively and to the benefit of all readers.

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