EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training
This is unit 1, Media accessibility;
element 4, What is media accessibility?;
video lecture "What is media accessibility?".
I am Anna Matamala, from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
In this lecture I will talk
about the notion of media accessibility
and how it relates to other concepts
such as audiovisual translation or accessibility.
Media accessibility was born in the field of audiovisual translation
(AVT for short).
AVT is a branch of translation studies
that deals with the transfer of audiovisual texts.
At the beginning, terminology was quite unsettled
and, in the literature, you will find
terms such as "constrained translation",
"film translation", "screen translation",
"media translation", "multimedia translation", etc.
In the end, "audiovisual translation"
gained ground and is now used
to refer to different transcreation modes
in the audiovisual world.
At the beginning, AVT put the emphasis
on transfer modes such as dubbing,
subtitling, voice-over or interpreting
in traditional media such as cinema or television.
At the turn of the century some scholars started to show
an interest in other modes which are more related to accessibility.
For instance, audio description (AD for short)
or subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH for short).
The conference In So Many Words, held in London in 2004,
and the first Media for All conference,
held in Barcelona in 2005, were a landmark:
AD and SDH were definitively included
in the AVT agenda.
"Media accessibility" at the beginning
referred mainly to AD and SDH,
but it then expanded to include
sign language interpreting or audio subtitling.
One may wonder how same-language SDH
or audio description can be seen as translation.
Well, the typical reply is to refer to Jakobson's seminal work,
where he differentiates between intralingual,
interlingual and intersemiotic categories of translation.
SDH can be an example of intralingual translation,
in which translation takes place into other signs of the same language.
Dubbing would be an example of interlingual translation,
in which translation takes place into another language.
Audio description could be seen as an intersemiotic translation.
Although Jakobson considers intersemiotic translation
a transfer from verbal signs into nonverbal sign systems,
we could expand this definition and include exactly the opposite,
that is, the translation of nonverbal signs into words,
which is what audio description is all about.
In 2005, issue number 4 of the journal Translating Today
included a paper where Jorge Díaz-Cintas
took a different approach
and advocated for the concept of "accessibility"
as a unifying term,
a concept that Pilar Orero and I embraced in a 2007 article.
We put forward that in order to produce an accessible opera
you need to overcome both sensorial and linguistic barriers.
With this approach, media accessibility
is not only for persons with disabilities,
but also for people who may not understand a language.
In the words of Gian Maria Greco,
media accessibility would concern
"media products, services, and environments
for all persons who cannot, or cannot completely,
access them in their original form".
If we have a look at MAP, the Media Accessibility Platform,
you will see that this broad concept guided its creation.
MAP adopts a holistic approach and considers a wide range
of access services or modalities: dubbing, voice-over,
subtitling in different forms (live subtitling, respeaking,
SDH, surtitling, etc.),
audio description, audio subtitling, media interpreting
(including sign language interpreting).
Similarly, when Pablo Romero-Fresco proposes
his concept of "accessible filmmaking",
he thinks about integrating
both traditional audiovisual translation modes
and access services as part of a film production process,
rather than as a postproduction task.
These approaches, in which media accessibility
is part of AVT or equals AVT,
are what Gian Maria Greco calls "particularist" accounts.
However, some scholars consider that media accessibility
is wider than AVT and cannot be reduced
to a sub-area of translation studies.
This third approach,
a "universalist account" in Greco's terminology,
considers that media accessibility is a broad interdisciplinary area
that overlaps with many fields, including AVT.
Media accessibility is seen as a proper subdomain
of a new field called Accessibility Studies.
There is still a lot of room for further development
of these concepts from a theoretical point of view.
In a book I published in 2019, I took a very simple approach.
First, I consider that the same phenomenon
can be approached from different perspectives.
Secondly, I think that "media accessibility"
may not be the most adequate term:
using the simple word "media" may imply
that other media beyond the audiovisual world
are included and, at the same time,
may leave out relevant audiovisual content
such as scenic arts performances.
This is why I prefer to establish a parallel with audiovisual translation
and talk about "audiovisual accessibility".
Audiovisual translation would be part of Translation Studies,
and audiovisual accessibility would be part of Accessibility Studies.
Any of the access services or audiovisual transfer modes
I have mentioned before could be analysed from both perspectives.
Another interesting concept is that of "accessible communication"
or "barrier-free communication",
an approach often taken by German-speaking scholars.
The focus is put not just on audiovisual content or on media
but on communication as a whole,
which needs to be barrier-free or accessible for all.
The emphasis is put not just on persons with disabilities
but on everybody.
This approach considers not only traditional transfer modes
but also new media accessibility services,
easy language and related concepts.
This video lecture has been prepared by Anna Matamala,
from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
You can reach me at anna.matamala@uab.cat.
Picture. Source:
Greco, G. M. (2019).
Accessibility Studies: Abuses, Misuses
and the Method of Poietic Design.
In C. Stephanidis (ed.), HCI International 2019 ,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
vol. 11786.
Cham: Springer, pp. 15-27.
The project EASIT has received funding
from the European Commission
under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships
for Higher Education programme,
grant agreement 2018-1-ES01-KA203-05275.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication
does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which reflect the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Partners of the EASIT project:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
Università degli Studi di Trieste,
Universidade de Vigo,
Stiftung Universität Hildesheim,
SDI München,
Dyslexiförbundet,
Radiotelevisija Slovenija,
Zavod Risa.
EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training