TO APPRAISE OR NOT TO APPRAISE, THAT IS THE QUESTION: THE STATE OF THE ART IN APPRAISAL RESEARCH IN AUDIO DESCRIPTION

ABSTRACT Audio description (AD) is, broadly speaking, the translation into words of visual impressions from a given object, aiming to make it accessible to the visually impaired. It is not only a means of accessibility, but also a modality of intersemiotic translation. The nonacademic literature on the subject has been emphasizing for many years the need to produce neutral AD scripts, to avoid interfering in the independence of the visually impaired to make their own judgments. However, supporters of this criterion fail to define it or to demonstrate how to produce a neutral script. Therefore, researchers from the State University of Ceará have been conducting empirical research with AD scripts to verify both the theoretical as well as the practical feasibility of such parameter of neutrality. The research has relied mainly on the theoretical and methodological framework of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, and within it, the Appraisal System. This work aims at presenting the state of the art of such research, reporting the trajectory of investigations from the first works up to present.