The Media Accessibility Platform was initiated by a team of four researchers with solid backgrounds in the field of audiovisual translation and media accessibility.

Gian Maria Greco is NAWA Ulam Fellow at the Institute of Applied Linguistics of the University of Warsaw, where he is a member of the AVT Lab research group.In 2017-2020, he was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at TransMedia Catalonia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). His research interests are on accessibility studies, with a focus on media accessibility and translation studies. He has held university positions as a post-doc, research fellow, and visiting fellow at various universities and served as accessibility consultant for public institutions and private organisations on live events, exhibitions, and cultural heritage. He has been keynote and invited speaker in many conferences, such as the TransAccess Conference organised by the European Commission and the Jagellonian University. He is a member of: GALMA - the Galician Observatory on Media Accessibility, the Scientific Board of the Journal of Audiovisual Translation, the European Society for Studies in Screen Translation, the Program Board of the International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, the Communication Working Group of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, the Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing of the ACM, and EuroScience.

Anna Matamala (BA in Translation, UAB; PhD in Applied Linguistics, UPF, Barcelona) is a Full Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). A member of the international research group TransMedia, she currently leads TransMedia Catalonia. Anna Matamala has both participated (DTV4ALLADLABHBB4ALLACT, ADLAB PRO, IMAC) and led or co-led (AVT-LP, ALST, VIW, NEA, RAD, EASIT) funded projects on audiovisual translation and media accessibility. She has taken an active role in the organisation of scientific events such as the Media for All conference or the ARSAD seminar, and has published extensively in internationally refereed journals. She is also involved in standardisation work. More information on her webpage.

Pilar Orero (BA in Hispanic Studies, Manchester University; PhD, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) is a member of TransMedia Catalonia. Pilar has participated in several EU projects (DTV4ALL, ADLAB, ADLAB PRO) and leads HBB4ALL and ACT. Since 2012 she has held the INDRA/ADECCO Chair for Accessible Technologies at UAB. She is actively involved in standardisation work at Spanish standardisation agency AENOR, and the international agencies ISI and UN ITU.

Pablo Romero Fresco is Ramón y Cajal researcher at Universidade de Vigo (Spain) and Honorary Professor of Translation and Filmmaking at the University of Roehampton (London, UK). He is the author of the books Subtitling through Speech Recognition: Respeaking (Routledge), Accessible Filmmaking (Routledge, forthcoming) and the editor of The Reception of Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Europe (Peter Lang). He is currently working with several governments, universities, companies and user associations around the world to introduce and improve access to live events for people with hearing loss. He has collaborated with Ofcom to carry out the first analysis of the quality of live subtitles on TV in the UK and is working with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRT) on a similar project in Canada. His Accessible Filmmaking Guide, published by the British Film Institute, is being used by many international public broadcasters, universities and producers to introduce a more inclusive and integrated approach to translation and accessibility in the filmmaking industry. He is the leader of the projects “Media Accessibility Platform” (COMM/MAD/2016/04) and “ILSA: Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access” (Erasmus + 2017-1-ES01-KA203-037948), funded by the EU Commission, and of the international research centre GALMA (Galician Observatory for Media Access), for which he’s currently coordinating 11 research projects on live subtitling and accessible filmmaking. Pablo is also a filmmaker. His first documentary, Joining the Dots (2012), was screened during the 69th Venice Film Festival as well as at other festivals in London, Poland, France, Switzerland and Austria and was used by Netflix as well as schools around Europe to raise awareness about audiodescription..

 

The beta version of MAP was partially funded by TransMedia Catalonia (2014SGR0027, 2017SGR113) as well as by the project “Media Accessibility Platform” (EU Commission, COMM/MAD/2016/04), led by Universidade de Vigo and GALMA.

Since 2018, MAP is hosted by TransMedia Catalonia research group.

MAP has received the support of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona through PADIR in 2019.

MAP has received support from ALMA, an excellence network on accessibility and minority languages in audiovisual media (RED2018-102475-T, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) and collaborates with the European network LEAD-ME.

MAP is currently supported by TransMedia Catalonia (2021SGR00077) and AccessCat Network (2021XARDI00007), both funded by the Catalan Government.