UniDescription
Descriptathon

The Descriptathon Approach

A workshop that combines a hackathon, gamification studies, software training, Audio Description, and university-level pedagogy

What is a Descriptathon?

  • A gamified way to learn about Audio Description: What is Audio Description? Who uses it, and how? Why is it so important? How does it differ from other types of writing and communication? What are the best practices and top pro secrets? We use conference calls plus online tools and resources to create an engaging (and Covid-19 safe) learning environment that incorporates gameplay to investigate ideas about media accessibility, especially for people who are DeafBlind, blind, and low-vision.
  • A fun way to practice Audio Description: We think people learn best — no matter what the topic — when they are motivated by interactions with others and having a good time in a social setting, even if that setting is virtual. Our training is tourney-style, featuring small teams and light-hearted competitions, peppered with Hawaii-oriented prizes. To be clear, as enjoyable and rewarding as it can be, the Descriptathon still is an intense three-day workshop that requires attention and dedicated engagement of all participants. We think if you’re going to commit to multiple days of learning about Audio Description, we are going to make it exciting and worth your while. Besides the three-day event, Descriptathoners also spend about 10 hours (2 hours a week for 5 weeks) prepping for the workshop. The outcomes, in turn, are concrete and impactful with each team producing an audio-described brochure made available to the public and team members taking these media-accessibility interests and skills with them for life.
  • An efficient way to produce Audio Description: We don't just practice these Audio Description skills in cloistered safe spaces. We also make Audio Description for real contexts during this process, openly testing our ideas in public labs all over the country (and the world). In other words, we learn about and practice Audio Description in ways that make the world more accessible at the same time.

Want to take part in a Descriptathon? The UniDescription Project is a grant-funded research initiative, so there is no direct cost to the participants (other than their time engaged in the related activities). When we gather enough grant funds to support a Descriptathon, we put one on (and invite interested parties). That typically happens once or twice a year.

To sponsor a Descriptathon, we ask grant funders to provide $6,250 to support each team. Funders can support an individual team (or more). For example, at $25,000, a sponsor can support four teams; for $50,000, a sponsor can support eight teams; and so on. Each team usually has 5 to 10 people. Those teams include staff from the organizations we are working with — such as parks, museums, public attractions of any sort — and usually a couple of people who are DeafBlind, or blind, or who have low vision, and an external volunteer who is sighted and engaged in the description process. Throughout our time together we encourage active collaboration and co-creation of description.

If you don't have a sponsor, we also include teams from public places that are not able to directly contribute grant funds, but who eagerly want to participate. Our general Descriptathon funding model is to create openings at a 3:1 ratio, meaning, for example, once we have grant support for 12 teams, we host a 16-team Descriptathon that includes four teams from our open waiting list (if your site wants to get a team on that waiting list, just let us know via this email).

Grant funds not only support those additional teams, they also provide the core means for a variety of related research-and-development activities. These funds, for example, cover stipends for people who are DeafBlind, blind, or who have low-vision when they conduct extracurricular reviewing and judging tasks. They cover the costs of student research assistants who help with the project year-round; faculty contributors working during summers; and consultants from across disciplines. They help to cover basic costs of research, development, and dissemination. These grant funds are the reason we can offer all our software in open-source, open-access formats, which we maintain, refine, and update several times a year, at no cost to the producers and consumers of Audio Description. So, thank you, again, grant funders, including the U.S. National Park Service, Google, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts!

If you would like to get involved in this project, either as a Descriptathon participant or as a funder, send an email of interest to the project's principal investigator, Brett Oppegaard, at this email.

And, on the individual level, here are some of the learner roles you can take in this project:

  • Learn on your own: UniD is open-access, meaning it's free to use and free to share your content widely. There also are many free public resources on the site. So you can create a free account and start describing right away, without restriction, independently learning about Audio Description and creating descriptions that make the world more accessible.
  • Volunteer for a Descriptathon: Our intense hackathon-inspired workshops happen roughly once or twice a year. We always are looking for engaged and motivated volunteers to help with Descriptathon teams. If you want to try out the three-day workshop as a volunteer, just let us know, and we'll get you on a team.
  • Create a Descriptathon team: If you have an organizational brochure (which is the object we base our current training method around), at least two organizational members who want to participate (more is fine), and grant funds to use to support the larger workshop, contact us about entering a team in the next Descriptathon.
  • Host a Descriptathon: If you have an organizational structure that could support multiple teams and even a portion of a Descriptathon (minimum of 8 teams), you might want to host your own Descriptathon, which can be tailored to your group's needs. Contact us if you are interested in that possibility via this email.
  • Descriptathon 10 (Feb. 6-8, 2024): Celebrating a decade, our Descriptathon 10 coconut trophy is shown on a black background. It is a metallic gold color, with the shape of the U.S. National Park Service arrowhead, in outline on the gold, as the black base of the design. The arrowhead is narrower at the top, where you might imagine it being attached to an arrow shaft, and then the arrowhead has a V-shaped body below that top neck, which gradually curves to a point, near the base of the coconut. On this black arrowhead shape, the artist has created a decorative eye-shaped symbol with a Roman-numeral X in the center, where the pupil would be, representing the 10th of our Descriptathons, which are workshops designed to make the world more-accessible for people who are blind, DeafBlind, or who have low-vision. The decorative lettering around the eye reads: "The UniDescription Project" / "Champions of the" ... above the eye, and "Descriptathon" / "www.unidescription.org" below the eye.
    Descriptathon 10 (Feb. 6-8, 2024): Celebrating a decade, our Descriptathon 10 coconut trophy is shown on a black background. It is a metallic gold color, with the shape of the U.S. National Park Service arrowhead, in outline on the gold, as the black base of the design. The arrowhead is narrower at the top, where you might imagine it being attached to an arrow shaft, and then the arrowhead has a V-shaped body below that top neck, which gradually curves to a point, near the base of the coconut. On this black arrowhead shape, the artist has created a decorative eye-shaped symbol with a Roman-numeral X in the center, where the pupil would be, representing the 10th of our Descriptathons, which are workshops designed to make the world more-accessible for people who are blind, DeafBlind, or who have low-vision. The decorative lettering around the eye reads: "The UniDescription Project" / "Champions of the" ... above the eye, and "Descriptathon" / "www.unidescription.org" below the eye.


    The grand prize — the Coconut — takes center stage in this collection of Descriptathon prizes. This coconut is painted orange with artistic splashes of purple on its left and pink on its right, bedazzled with sparkling multicolored beads that have been glued to its outlines for a tactile effect. The coconut reads
    Descriptathon 9 (Oct. 18-20, 2022): The grand prize — the Coconut — takes center stage in this collection of Descriptathon prizes. This coconut is painted orange with artistic splashes of purple on its left and pink on its right, bedazzled with sparkling multicolored beads that have been glued to its outlines for a tactile effect. The coconut reads "The Winners of Descriptathon IX, The UniDescription Project, www.unidescription.org, 2022." The "Descriptathon IX" part is the largest of the text, by far, and is created out of curvy and graffiti-like balloon letting, including the "IX" inset within the D of "Descriptathon," as if it is an eye shape inside the ear shape of the D. The coconut has a gold-and-black lei wrapped around it, with the black parts made of kukui nut shells, which are similar in shape to a mango only about the size of large grape. There is a small tiki figure shaped like a pineapple on top of a bamboo container in this photo, as a sample of other prizes, with other wood objects blurred in the background along with boxes of cookies and other treats.


    Prizes for Descriptathon 8 (Oct. 26-28, 2021) are shown, including the grand prize D8 Coconut, which this time is black, with gold futuristic lettering, stating D8 Descriptathon Champions 2021. The text is stacked, with one word on each line. The Champions text is composed of images of a fall harvest, such as gourds, pumpkins, and vines. Monstera deliciosa leaves frame the texts. Those green leaves, which are huge in nature, are text-sized here and have small triangular cut-out parts around their edges, creating the impression of leaves within a leaf. Other prizes include leis (one with silk tropical flowers, another with white shells and black kukui nuts), plus luggage tags, lanyards, and water bottles.
    Prizes for Descriptathon 8 (Oct. 26-28, 2021) are shown, including the grand prize D8 Coconut, which this time is black, with gold futuristic lettering, stating "D8 Descriptathon Champions 2021." The text is stacked, with one word on each line. The "Champions" text is composed of images of a fall harvest, such as gourds, pumpkins, and vines. Monstera deliciosa leaves frame the texts. Those green leaves, which are huge in nature, are text-sized here and have small triangular cut-out parts around their edges, creating the impression of leaves within a leaf. The champion of D8, and the holder of this trophy, was: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.


    DESCRIBING: A horizontal color photograph. DESCRIPTION: An aqua-blue painted coconut is placed lengthwise in the center of the frame. The image has a black background, and the coconut is surrounded by Hawaiian-themed candies, including leis filled with pineapple gummies rather than flowers, and boxes of cookies and candies. The coconut has been handpainted, with hand lettering on it as well. A large UniD logo is the focal point of the decoration. Normally, this logo is a brown capital D, with small orange and dark-blue rectangles representing sound waves in the center of the letter, where the counter space in the D normally would be. In this version, a yellow hibiscus flower, with its large petals and lengthy stem, has been added to the top left corner of the logo. Its green vines wrap around the top and the bottom of the letter. The hand lettering around it reads: 2021 D7 Champion.
    D7 and more sweets: Hawaii-themed prizes given out in Descriptathon 7 (Feb. 7-9, 2021) are shown, against a black background, including the championship coconut, earned in D7 by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

    All of the coconut art was created by volunteer Tia Oppegaard


    Descriptathon Championship Teams:

    Descriptathon 10 (2024): Pinnacles National Park (NPS Pacific Region)
    Descriptathon 9 (2022): Pullman National Monument (NPS Midwest Region)
    Descriptathon 8 (2021): Fort Vancouver National Historic Site (NPS Pacific Region)
    Descriptathon 7 (2021): Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (NPS Midwest Region)
    Descriptathon 6 (2020): Desert National Wildlife Refuge (USFWS)
    Descriptathon 5 (2019): Frederick Law Olmsted NHS (NPS Northeast Region)
    Descriptathon 4 (2019): Weir Farm National Historical Park (NPS Northeast Region)
    Descriptathon 3 (2017): Whiskeytown–Shasta–Trinity NRA (NPS Pacific Region)
    Descriptathon 2 (2017): Valley Forge National Historical Park (NPS Northeast Region)
    Descriptathon 1 (2016): Not in a tourney format, so no champion crowned

    Championships by Organization/Region
    U.S. National Park Service (8) — Northeast (3), Pacific (3), Midwest (2)
    U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (1) — West Region (1)

    Academic Papers

    Technical Communication (2022) logo
    Technical Communication (2022)

    Oppegaard, B., & Rabby, M. (2022). Gamifying good deeds: User experience, agency, and values in play during a Descriptathon and beyond, Technical Communication. doi.org/10.55177/tc124312

    Inclusive Digital Interactives (2020) logo
    Inclusive Digital Interactives (2020)

    Oppegaard, B. (2020). Unseeing solutions: From failures to feats through increasingly inclusive design. In J. Majewski, R. Marquis, N. Proctor, & B. Ziebarth (Eds.), Inclusive digital interactives: Best practices, innovative experiments, and questions for research. Washington, D.C.: Access Smithsonian, The Institute for Human Centered Design, & Museweb. URL: https://access.si.edu/sites/default/files/inclusive-digital-interactives-best-practices-research.pdf

    Academic Posters

    Graphic of the  poster
    CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication

    "Descriptathon Teams and Tourneys: Let the Games Commence," research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication (CCCCs) Digital Praxis Poster Sessions, held online, on April 9, 2021.

    Graphic of the  poster
    SIGDOC - Special Interest Group (SIG) on Design of Communication (DOC)

    "From seeing to hearing: Lessons learned from a research-based design project focused upon audio description, print-to-acoustic remediation, and mobile-app delivery" research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Association for Computer Machinery SIG Design of Communication (SIGDOC), held in Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S., in 2016.

    Graphic of the  poster
    SIGDOC - Special Interest Group (SIG) on Design of Communication (DOC)

    "To Bracket or Not Bracket: Experiments in Gamification in the Wilds of Technical Communication" research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Association for Computer Machinery SIG Design of Communication (SIGDOC), held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2017.

    Academic Presentations

    Oppegaard, B. (2021, June 5-9). No research tool available, kinda no problem: Bliss and bootstrapping of build-it-yourself [Workshop presentation]. Society for Technical Communication 2021 Technical Communication Summit Conference & Expo (STC), online.


    Oppegaard, B. (2021, April 7 - 10). Descriptathon lessons learned: The tool is only an instrument; it needs to be played to have power [Poster presentation]. Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), online.


    Oppegaard, B., Conway, M., & Conway, T. (2017, August 11-13). To Bracket or Not Bracket: Experiments in Gamification in the Wilds of Technical Communication. [Poster presentation]. The Association for Computer Machinery Special Interest Group on Design of Communication, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.


    Oppegaard, B. (2017, May 25-29). Insider Positionality: Creating Tools and Translations to Investigate Audio Description. [Paper presentation]. International Communication Association Conference, San Diego, CA, United States.


    Oppegaard, B. (2016, September 23-24). From seeing to hearing: Research-based design experimentation in development of open-source web and mobile tools for print-to-acoustic remediation. The Association for Computer Machinery SIG Design of Communication Conference, Silver Spring, MD, United States.


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