การสื่อสารแบบมีส่วนร่วมของคนพิการทางการเห็นในฐานะ “ผู้ผลิต” เสียงบรรยายภาพ

Abstract

                   The objective of the research project entitled The Participatory Communication of Visually Impaired People as Audio Description Producers aims to explore the extent to which visually impaired persons participate in audio descriptions as “producers” and under what conditions. The study is based on a participatory action research design and the sample group is composed of visually impaired subjects and ordinary people living and engaging activities together in a camping-activity style. The research relies upon participatory communication, convergent communication, audio description and disability concepts as guidelines for approaching problems, research design, observation and data analysis. Accordingly, data collection is divided into three stages, namely, before, during and after the participatory action research. Data collection em-ploys observation, individual interviews, group interviews, focus group interviews and reading of the daily records on the sample group.
                    The research found that participatory communication brings about changes in perception, understanding and behaviors in the sample group. Initially and before the subjects become familiar with one another, the general feeling is one of “segregation”. Following engagement in the activities and building rapport, the general feeling becomes one of “mutual amicability”. Additionally, after producing audio descriptions, the sample group perceives and understands that visually impaired individuals and ordinary people can “work and live together”. Hence, the findingsreveal that visually impaired individuals can participate and become a part of audio description production teams where the condition for being producers requires working as a team with at least one member being non-visually-impaired and certain necessary equipment to facilitate work for visually impaired people.
                    The change in audio description production structure that involves visually impaired persons as producers relies on certain supporting factors such as a space where people are open-minded and accept disabled persons, facilitators of participatory communication and activities’ designed to build rapport before commencing the work. However, the most important factor is mutual perception and understanding that disabled persons can function together with ordinary people.