We study descriptions, description tools, and Descriptathons – not necessarily in that order
Peer-reviewed publications, posters, and presentations
Bullen, M., Oppegaard, B., Koirala, S. & Conway, M. (2026). Beyond Words: Reception of Audio Description in Public Places Complicated by External Factors. Review of Disability Studies, 20(4). https://rdsjournal.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1391
Oppegaard, B. (2025). The future of ethics in mobile technologies: An ethic of inclusion elevating DEIA principles to the forefront of intersections of mobile technologies, accessibility, and place. In D. Ross (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of ethics in technical and professional communication. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003434375
Oppegaard, B. (2025). Locative Media Design as Sound Art and Scholarship: Pioneering Generative Intersections of Mobile Technologies, Media Accessibility, and Place. In G. Goggin, & L. Hjorth (Eds.), The Routledge companion to mobile media. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003166016
Parker, A., Oppegaard, B., Hopper, H., Magaoay-Baniaga, H., Swearingen, K., Cable, M.-C., & Neumann Samson, L. (2025). Sound, touch, and place: An exploratory study of the potential for emotive cognitive mapping through the use of audio description and tactile objects at a national memorial. Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies, 34(2), 106–132. https://doi.org/10.7311/0860-5734.34.2.06
Jiang, L., Zhu, A., & Oppegaard, B. (2025, April 26 - May 1). “A Little Guidedog Voice on Their Shoulder”: Evaluating Generative AI Writing Assistants for Audio Description Creation. [Poster Presentation]. Association of Computing Machinery CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Yokohama, Japan.
Oppegaard, B., Anderson, T., & James-Bacon, S. (2025). From Sights to Sounds: A New Model for Integrating Audio Description into Library Digital Image Collections. ACRL TechConnect, Association of College and Research Libraries in the American Library Association. DOI: https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/26803/34733.
Oppegaard, B., & Rabby, M. (2024). Inclusive measures: Establishing audio description tactics that impact social inclusion. In A. Lancaster, & C. King (Eds.), Amplifying Voices in UX: Balancing design and user needs in technical communication. SUNY Press. https://bit.ly/amplifyingvoicesinUX
Hartley, M., & Oppegaard, B. (2024). Collaboration, Friendly Competition, and Co-Creation: A Hackathon-Inspired Way of Audio Describing the World, One National Park Service Brochure at A Time. Heritage in Action, UNESCO-WHIPIC. DOI: https://unesco-whipic.org/reports/
Read More
Bergin, D., & Oppegaard, B. (2024). Automating media accessibility: An approach for analyzing audio description across generative artificial intelligence algorithms, Technical Communication Quarterly, 34(2), 169–184. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10572252.2024.2372771.
Oppegaard, B., & Miguel, A. (2022). Audio description of gender: Self-description as an evocation of identity, Perspectives. doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2116990
Oppegaard, B., Xu, Q., & Hurtut, T. (2023). Audio describing tables and charts: A re-visualization process for sharing complex data sets with people who are blind or who have low-vision. STC Intercom, 70(5), 14-18.
Oppegaard, B., & Rabby, M. (2022). Gamifying good deeds: User experience, agency, and values in play during a Descriptathon and beyond, Technical Communication. doi.org/10.55177/tc124312
Conway, M., Oppegaard, B., Bullen., M., Miguel., A. & Brown-Ogilvie, T. (2023). Describing people and portraits through audio description: Preferences of people who are blind, low vision, and DeafBlind. Helen Keller Services for the Blind. https://www.helenkeller.org/audio-describing-people-and-portraits-2022/
Conway, M., Oppegaard, B., Bullen., M., Miguel., A. & Brown-Ogilvie, T. (2023). Describing people and portraits through audio description: Preferences of people who are blind, low vision, and DeafBlind. Helen Keller Services for the Blind. https://www.helenkeller.org/audio-describing-people-and-portraits-2022/
Koirala, S., & Oppegaard, B. (2022). The light bulb went on: A historiography-based approach to disentangling audio description’s influential U.S. roots from its common practices. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 116(4), 1-12. doi.org/10.1177/0145482X221116903
Conway, M., Oppegaard, B., & Hayes, T. (2020). Audio description: Making useful maps for blind and visually impaired people. Technical Communication, 67(2), 68-85. URL: https://www.stc.org/techcomm/2020/04/28/audio-description-making-useful-maps-for-blind-and-visually-impaired-people/.
Oppegaard, B. (2020). Pushing Forward Together: From failures to feats through increasingly inclusive design. In J. Majewski, R. Marquis, N. Proctor, & B. Ziebarth (Eds.), Inclusive digital interactives: Best practices, innovative experiments, and questions for research. Washington, D.C.: Access Smithsonian, The Institute for Human Centered Design, & Museweb. URL: https://access.si.edu/sites/default/files/inclusive-digital-interactives-best-practices-research.pdf
Conway, T., Oppegaard, B., & Conway, M. (2016). Toward cultural inclusion: Using mobile technologies to increase access to audio description, The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 11(4), 5-8. URL https://www.rdsjournal.org/index.php/journal/article/view/596.
"Descriptathon Teams and Tourneys: Let the Games Commence," research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication (CCCCs) Digital Praxis Poster Sessions, held online, on April 9, 2021.
"To Bracket or Not Bracket: Experiments in Gamification in the Wilds of Technical Communication" research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Association for Computer Machinery SIG Design of Communication (SIGDOC), held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2017.
"From seeing to hearing: Lessons learned from a research-based design project focused upon audio description, print-to-acoustic remediation, and mobile-app delivery" research poster presented by Brett Oppegaard at the annual Association for Computer Machinery SIG Design of Communication (SIGDOC), held in Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S., in 2016.
Besides the scholarship we produce, we also curate in our UniD Library what we consider to be the most important research and related texts in this field of study