1. A computer-implemented method of presenting a virtual environment to a user, the method comprising: upon detecting a first arrival of the user at a first virtual location in the virtual environment: determining a then-current state of a first element based on one or more characteristics associated with the first element; and generating an audio description of a plurality of elements identified as being present at the first virtual location, including a first element and a second element; detecting, subsequent to the first arrival, a second arrival of the user at the first virtual location; detecting one or more visually perceptible differences between a now-current state and the then-current state of the first element within the virtual environment; programmatically determining that a subset of the one or more visually perceptible differences of the first element are significant relative to one or more visually perceptible differences in the first element that are not in the subset; and generating an audio description of the significant subset of the one or more visually perceptible differences of the first element based at least in part on an amount of time elapsed between the first arrival and the second arrival, wherein an audio description of the second element is not generated because no visually perceptible differences of the second element exist between the first arrival and the second arrival.