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A speaker or head with sound radiating from it, marking described content.
Also known as: AD symbol, Described video symbol, Video description symbol, Descriptive audio
The audio description symbol marks content carrying a spoken narration of what is happening on screen or stage, inserted between lines of dialogue. It is a separate provision from captioning, and the two are frequently confused because both appear as accessibility toggles in the same menu.
Indicates that audio description is available: a spoken narration of visual action, setting and on-screen text, fitted into the gaps between dialogue.
Contexts: Public information
Serves blind and partially sighted audiences, and is the counterpart of captioning rather than a version of it — captions carry sound to those who cannot hear it, description carries picture to those who cannot see it.
Contexts: Public information
Has no single settled drawing: implementations use the letters AD, a speaker with radiating lines, or a head in profile with sound, and streaming platforms each use their own.
Stated plainly because visual matching cannot promise one shape here. The provision is standard; the mark for it is not.
Contexts: Public information
Marks a separate narration track that describes what is happening on screen or on stage in the gaps between dialogue — who has entered, what they are wearing, where the scene has moved to. On television and streaming it is selected like an alternative language; in a theatre or a gallery it usually arrives through a headset collected at the door.
Contexts: Public information, Software
Most often a loudspeaker shape with two or three curved lines radiating from its wide end, sometimes replaced by the letters A and D.
Both belong to the Disability Access Symbols set and are shown together on media accessibility menus.