Title
Exploring the role of “agency” in the production of Easy-to-Read subtitles
Conference name
Media for All 10 Conference
City
Country
Belgium
Modalities
Date
06/07/2023-07/07/2023
Abstract
Easy-to-Read, or E2R, is a methodology (AENOR, 2018) (as well as a translation modality, a linguistic variation, or a service) for turning contents in standard language into contents that are easy to comprehend for people with reading difficulties (Bernabé & Orero, 2019). These range from people with intellectual disabilities (1-3% of the world population [Special Olympics, n.d.]) and reading disabilities (about 20% of the population [Shaywitz, 2003]) to people with low literacy, displaced people, the elderly (Saggion, 2017). Now, like many other disciplines within Media Accessibility, or MA (subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing, audio description, and live captioning), E2R is adding new audiences to the list.
In this framework, the demand for E2R texts will continue increasing in the next years, also as a consequence of national and international regulations, like the European Accessibility Act, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, or the European standard Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services. If this shows the society is aware of the usefulness of E2R texts for the audience at large, this is alarming because it may mean that people without professional expertise can produce E2R texts that do not meet the needs of the target audience. For this reason, the European Federation of people with intellectual disabilities and their families Inclusion Europe has issued guidelines that enable professionals to produce E2R content that suit the needs of the target audience. These guidelines include the explicit request to involve the end-users when producing an E2R text.
This need to include the target audience when producing MA services has always proved difficult to implement, particularly when the production of such services is massive. To try to meet the need for people with disabilities to take part in the production of E2R texts, the European Commission has financed the Erasmus+ project Train2Validate, or T2V, which aims to produce training materials for professional E2R validators and facilitators, whose job is to certify that a text is easy to read (https://plenainclusionmadrid.org/train2validate/). They do this by attending validation sessions, during which a facilitator coordinates the job of the validators, which consists in analysing an E2R text and checking its comprehensibility.
In this speech, we intend to show how people with reading difficulties participate as agents in the production of audiovisual material subtitled in E2R language. To do so, we will, first, introduce the notions of E2R and validation; then, we will briefly illustrate the T2V project and its results; and we will finally draw on the production of E2R subtitles and the role of “agency” in this emerging form of MA.
In this framework, the demand for E2R texts will continue increasing in the next years, also as a consequence of national and international regulations, like the European Accessibility Act, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, or the European standard Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services. If this shows the society is aware of the usefulness of E2R texts for the audience at large, this is alarming because it may mean that people without professional expertise can produce E2R texts that do not meet the needs of the target audience. For this reason, the European Federation of people with intellectual disabilities and their families Inclusion Europe has issued guidelines that enable professionals to produce E2R content that suit the needs of the target audience. These guidelines include the explicit request to involve the end-users when producing an E2R text.
This need to include the target audience when producing MA services has always proved difficult to implement, particularly when the production of such services is massive. To try to meet the need for people with disabilities to take part in the production of E2R texts, the European Commission has financed the Erasmus+ project Train2Validate, or T2V, which aims to produce training materials for professional E2R validators and facilitators, whose job is to certify that a text is easy to read (https://plenainclusionmadrid.org/train2validate/). They do this by attending validation sessions, during which a facilitator coordinates the job of the validators, which consists in analysing an E2R text and checking its comprehensibility.
In this speech, we intend to show how people with reading difficulties participate as agents in the production of audiovisual material subtitled in E2R language. To do so, we will, first, introduce the notions of E2R and validation; then, we will briefly illustrate the T2V project and its results; and we will finally draw on the production of E2R subtitles and the role of “agency” in this emerging form of MA.