Reception studies are frequently used in audio description research to elicit preferences of the visually impaired about certain aspects and level of acceptance of various solutions. However, this research method is characterised by limitations, which are discussed in this article as regards the participants and the design of reception studies. We then present a study which we think has been successful in overcoming some of these limitations, conducted as part of the European project entitled ADLAB: Lifelong Access for the Blind on 80 visually impaired persons (VIPs) and 77 sighted controls from six project partners’ countries. The respondents were presented with various audio description solutions and answered preference, comprehension and visualisation questions to find out which solutions they preferred, how much they understood following a given description and how easy it was for them to imagine a given description. We conclude that eliciting subjective opinions of respondents might be inconclusive and that AD reception research should be more focused on the cognitive efficiency of AD.
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