Widening media accessibility in the digital age
Widening media accessibility in the digital age
Enhanced media accessibility is increasingly regarded as relevant to a broad spectrum of the viewing public with many of us requiring additional support during our lifetimes, whether by choice or necessity, to engage with a highly digitised and media-driven world. As a result, audiovisual accessibility is now shifting beyond the traditional constraints of physical disability (sight- or hearing-impairment) to address the requirements of those with supplementary cognitive needs, including, but not exclusive to, those living with cognitive difference.
Using text-to-speech modalities as our sandpit, we plan to explore the creation of new types of audio, video and content description, applying both traditional techniques and emerging technologies, to assist audiences requiring support with narrative comprehension, plot contextualisation, and intra-textual cohesion.
The panel will open with a series of short presentations covering state-of-the-art research in the widening media accessibility arena, provided by our invited speakers. This will be followed by a round-table discussion centred on the influence of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on the development and diversification of text-to-speech audience offerings, with particular attention being paid to the language simplification and ‘easification’ movements.
Panellists
Alison Eardley
University of Westminster
Biography
Alison Eardley, PhD, is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Westminster. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, she has used cognitive psychology to unpick visuocentric biases that privilege visual experience. Her work now applies a cognitive lens to visitor experience, interpretation and audience evaluation in museums and the cultural sector more broadly. This work includes exploring inclusive audio description, as a means of enhancing museum experience for all visitors. She is currently working on an AHRC-NEH funded project based on the W-ICAD model (workshop for inclusive co-created audio description), in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the Watts Gallery and Artist Village, VocalEyes and Smaritfy. Alison was a Fulbright-Smithsonian Scholar (2021–22), working with the Anacostia Community Museum.
Gian Maria Greco
University of Macerata
Biography
Gian Maria Greco is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Macerata (Italy). He specialises in theoretical and applied issues in accessibility studies and translation studies. He holds a PhD in Philosophy (University of Salento, Italy) and a PhD in Translation Studies (University of Roehampton, UK). He has held several university positions, including Ulam Research Fellow (University of Warsaw, Poland), Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (UAB, Spain), and Junior Research Associate (University of Oxford, UK). He complements his research expertise with extensive experience as an accessibility consultant for public institutions and private organisations and is the scientific director of POIESIS, an NGO specialised in accessibility.
Anna Jankowska
University of Antwerp
Biography
Anna Jankowska, PhD, is a Professor at the Department of Translators and Interpreters of University of Antwerp and former Assistant Lecturer in the Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). She was a visiting scholar at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona within the Mobility Plus program of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2016-2019). Her recent research projects include studies on audio description process, mobile accessibility and software. Anna Jankowska is the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Audiovisual Translation and member of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST).
Gert Vercauteren
University of Antwerp
Biography
Gert Vercauteren is a tenure track lecturer in Translation Technology at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting of the University of Antwerp. In addition to teaching translation technology classes, he is also responsible for the Skills Lab, the Department’s simulated translation bureau. He is a member of the TricS research group and the OPEN Expertise Centre for Accessible Media and Culture. His research focuses on audio description, more in particular on content selection in AD and on the cognitive load imposed by audio descriptions. He currently co-supervises a PhD that looks into the automatic translation of existing audio descriptions in Dutch.
Convenors
Sabine Braun
University of Surrey