Audio description in practice – Report by a blind recipient and audio describer

My name is Stefanie Schruhl. I am married, have a young daughter and I work throughout Germany as an audio describer for various clients who create audio descriptions for television and cinema. I am actually a certificated psychologist. But seven years ago, after several unsuccessful attempts to find steady employment, I decided to reorient myself professionally. In spring 2011, Hörfilm e.V., an association of German audio describers, was looking for a blind audio describer. They invited me to a one-day work trial in which we described ten minutes of a scene from a popular German crime series called Tatort starring the inspectors Batic and Leitmayr. That was a tough test.