You Described, We Archived: A Rich Audio Description Dataset

Journal Article

Abstract

The You Described, We Archived dataset (YuWA) is a collaboration between San Francisco StateUniversity and The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. It includes audio description (AD) data collectedworldwide 2013-2022 through YouDescribe, an accessibility tool for adding audio descriptions to YouTube videos.YouDescribe, a web-based audio description tool along with an iOS viewing app, has a community of 12,000+average annual visitors, with approximately 3,000 volunteer describers, and has created over 5,500 audio describedYouTube videos. Blind and visually impaired (BVI) viewers request videos, which then are saved to a wishlist andvolunteer audio describers select a video, write a script, record audio clips, and edit clip placement to create an audiodescription. The AD tracks are stored separately, posted for public view athttps://youdescribe.org/andplayedtogether with the YouTube video.The YuWA audio description data paired with the describer and viewer metadata,and collection timeline has a large number of research applications including artificial intelligence, machinelearning, sociolinguistics, audio description, video understanding, video retrieval and video-language groundingtasks

Journal

Journal on Technology and Persons with Disabilities

Volume

11

Year of Publication

2023