Future Audio Describers in Museums: Interpreting Visual Thinking through Practice

This study aims to conduct a functional evaluation of the visual thinking strategies employed by prospective audio description specialists, who are positioned as both audiences and performers. Within the scope of the study, fourteen students enrolled in the elective audio description course at Adana Alparslan Türkeş Science and Technology University were asked to visit the Adana Archaeology Museum and create object descriptions based on a translation commission. The commission outlined the purpose, context, and target audience—blind and/or partially sighted individuals—following the principles of skopos theory. These descriptions were then analyzed in accordance with skopos theory and Abigail Housen’s (2007) five visual thinking strategies: accountive (personal, narrative-based observation), constructive (structural analysis), classifying, interpretive, and re-creative. The findings revealed that accountive and constructive strategies were predominantly employed. It was also observed that some students considered the needs of the ‘implied visitor’—a conceptual adaptation of Iser’s (1978) ‘implied reader’ that reflects the describer’s mental model of their audience—by using inclusive language, directional expressions, and familiar measurements, while others focused primarily on the factual characteristics of the objects. The results indicate that students generally approached museum description as an informative task rather than as an experiential or interpretive practice. This highlights the need for further pedagogical development, particularly in fostering greater awareness of audience-oriented strategies.