What tense, person, naming and wording rules do the ACB, DCMP and Netflix audio description guides give for writing a description line?
ACB 2009, DCMP and Netflix v2.5 agree on present tense, active voice, third person (Netflix allows second-person plural for some children's content) and objectivity. On film terms they disagree: ACB advises avoiding 'close-up' or 'fade to black', and Netflix allows common film terms such as 'now in close-up' when needed. On naming, all three describe a character by a visible attribute until the name is established, with exceptions (Netflix allows earlier naming in some cases).
ACB 2009, DCMP and Netflix v2.5 agree on present tense, active voice, third person (Netflix allows second-person plural for some children's content) and objectivity. On film terms they disagree: ACB advises avoiding 'close-up' or 'fade to black', and Netflix allows common film terms such as 'now in close-up' when needed. On naming, all three describe a character by a visible attribute until the name is established, with exceptions (Netflix allows earlier naming in some cases).
Curator qualifications: Guides read 2026-10-22; no description written or voiced. Scope correction: the producer contrasts DCMP ('name recurring characters, trait for others') with Netflix's unnamed-until-introduced rule. DCMP's general rule is the same ('if a name is not given, identify by an obvious attribute until a name is provided'); the recurring-character wording belongs to its Elmo's World example. So the claim that naming a first-time character may follow one guide and break another is overstated. ACB media identification (p.24) and Netflix expression/body-language guidance (F3) from producer reading.
Limitations: Guides read 2026-10-22; no description written or voiced.
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
"citations": [
{
"url": "https://adp.acb.org/docs/ADP_Standards.pdf",
"note": "ACB Audio Description Standards (2009 PDF; bytes equal pin) pdftotext L342, L353-354, L1110-1113; Netflix Audio Description Style Guide v2.5 (bytes equal pin), 1.2 HOW/WHO, 5.0 preamble; DCMP Description Key: What to Describe (live), Characters/People; DCMP Description Key: How to Describe (live), Point of View and Narrative Tense"
},
{
"url": "https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215510667-Audio-Description-Style-Guide-v2-5",
"note": "ACB Audio Description Standards (2009 PDF; bytes equal pin) pdftotext L342, L353-354, L1110-1113; Netflix Audio Description Style Guide v2.5 (bytes equal pin), 1.2 HOW/WHO, 5.0 preamble; DCMP Description Key: What to Describe (live), Characters/People; DCMP Description Key: How to Describe (live), Point of View and Narrative Tense"
},
{
"url": "https://dcmp.org/learn/618-description-key---what-to-describe",
"note": "ACB Audio Description Standards (2009 PDF; bytes equal pin) pdftotext L342, L353-354, L1110-1113; Netflix Audio Description Style Guide v2.5 (bytes equal pin), 1.2 HOW/WHO, 5.0 preamble; DCMP Description Key: What to Describe (live), Characters/People; DCMP Description Key: How to Describe (live), Point of View and Narrative Tense"
},
{
"url": "https://dcmp.org/learn/617-description-key---how-to-describe",
"note": "ACB Audio Description Standards (2009 PDF; bytes equal pin) pdftotext L342, L353-354, L1110-1113; Netflix Audio Description Style Guide v2.5 (bytes equal pin), 1.2 HOW/WHO, 5.0 preamble; DCMP Description Key: What to Describe (live), Characters/People; DCMP Description Key: How to Describe (live), Point of View and Narrative Tense"
}
]
}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] ACB 2009, DCMP and Netflix v2.5 agree on present tense, active voice, third person (Netflix allows second-person plural for some children's content) and objectivity. On film terms they disagree: ACB advises avoiding 'close-up' or 'fade to black', and Netflix allows common film terms such as 'now in close-up' when needed. On naming, all three describe a character by a visible attribute until the name is established, with exceptions (Netflix allows earlier naming in some cases). · locator: ACB Audio Description Standards (2009 PDF; bytes equal pin) pdftotext L342, L353-354, L1110-1113; Netflix Audio Description Style Guide v2.5 (bytes equal pin), 1.2 HOW/WHO, 5.0 preamble; DCMP Description Key: What to Describe (live), Characters/People; DCMP Description Key: How to Describe (live), Point of View and Narrative Tense source
Rights
| component | license | hosting | redistribution | modification | training | Evidence and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| documentation | unknown | permitted | permitted | unknown | unknown | Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources. |