The founders of the Audio Description Coalition (ADC) first met in August 2006, at the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) Conference in Washington, DC. They began compiling and writing the best practices or standards of audio description and creating a code of conduct for audio describers and trainers. Working from the Standards for Audio Description of the California Audio Describers Alliance, the ADC founders created this expanded document and issued the first edition in August 2007. The second edition was issued in August 2008 and the third in June 2009.
The founding members of the Audio Description Coalition and their affiliations during that process included:
Janet Zoubek Dickson, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ
Ruth M. Feldman, Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, CT
Celia Hughes, VSA Texas, Austin, TX,
Deborah B. Lewis, Arts Access Now, Altadena, CA
Michael Mooney, Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ
William V. Patterson, Audio Description Solutions, New Oxford, PA
Betty Siegel, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC
Jessica Swanson, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC
Members of the California Audio Describers Alliance included AudioVision, Los Angeles Radio Reading Service, Ethel Louise Armstrong Foundation, San Diego Opera, and Audio Description Los Angeles. The California Audio Describers Alliance standards were created by a committee of audio describers based on original audio description training materials from Gregory Frazier of San Francisco State University and Alan Woods of the Ohio Theatre Alliance, who was trained by Margaret and Cody Pfanstiehl of the Metropolitan Washington Ear.