ABSTRACT
Audio description (AD) is a tool used to ensure greater accessibility to visual information to
people with visual disabilities and consists in a translation of images into words. This work
has investigated the audio description in football and aimed at analysing the reception of
audio description for visually impaired people of a football match between Brazilian teams
Ceará and Portuguesa in a Brazilian stadium Castelão, in Fortaleza city. The research
questions were as follows: How would be the reception of a football match by a visually
impaired person using only audio description? How would be the reception of a football
match by a visually impaired person through audio description and radio broadcast as means
of accessibility? To these questions the following hypotheses were formulated: Visually
impaired person needs both audio description and radio commentaries, as most sighted people
who listen to the radio into the stadium in order to loose nothing about the match; Visually
impaired person needs only the audio description to watch a football match, since the use of
two audios, audio description and radio broadcast, would be confusing. The research
methodology was descriptive exploratory, with a qualitative approach. The results pointed to
the refutation of both hypotheses. Neither audio description and radio broadcast, nor audio
description by itself were well received by visually impaired participants. According to the
participants, the best way to a visually impaired person watch a football match would be
through an audio description similar to the radio commentaries. Audio description was
considered more efficient because it has presented details about visual elements of the match,
however, it lacked the emotion responsible for the audience involvement with football match.
Keywords: Audiovisual Translation, Accessibility, Adiodescription of football.
