Audio Description (AD), the youngest sibling in the AVT family, is still in its infancy, characterised by the absence of wide-ranging theories to explain successful aspects of practice, as well as to suggest possible avenues to explore in order to improve practice. The first point that has to be addressed is the question of description vs. narration. As specialists in AVT we therefore need to provide a solid foundation for this mode in an attempt to initiate a process where theory can also inform practice. We have an immense task, namely to conduct research not only on the current practice of AD, but also on what constitutes the reception of AV texts for individuals who potentially have full access to the visual codes in an audio-visual text, and how this differs from the experience of an AV text by an individual who does not have full potential access.  Should we aim for equivalence between these two types of reception? If so, to which degree, and how? These questions will necessarily have to dwell on textual features and the interplay between supplementary code systems, but also on contextual and functional aspects of language and language processing.

Our research will therefore have to include descriptive studies, corpus studies, studies in psychonarratology, in psycholinguistics, in cognitive narratology, in functional linguistics and complexity studies. This issue of Perspectives invites contributions in the above fields among others, but with an emphasis on the theoretical underpinnings of AD.