Senior Citizens as an Underresearched Age Group of Audiovisual Translation Users

In recent years, approaches to audiovisua translation and media accessibility services have shifted from serving one group of viewers only towards a more universal design that takes into account a wider range of users. In line with that approach, some scholars point out, for example, that subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) or accessibility applications created with the blind and partially-sighted in mind could prove beneficial to senior citizens. This group of viewers is likely to experience age-related sensori-motor and cognitive decline, which may significantly influence their film-watching experience as well as their preference for an AVT method. As populations in many countries are aging, senior citizens might be considered an important part of potential cinema clientele. Unfortunately, since studies in AVT have concentrated on younger audiences, little is known about senior citizens’ specific preferences concerning audiovisual translation. The objective of this article is to briefly characterise senior citizens as recipients of audiovisual translation and discuss the possibilities for future studies on the subject.

Evaluation and collaboration in creating online audio descriptions of visual art

AccesArte is an accessibility project that is part of the internship programme at Kaleidoscope, a non-profit organization founded by the authors to apply audio description (AD) research to developing accessibility programmes. The project consists of ADs of a thematic selection of visual artworks, and the development of eclectic and experience-oriented AD types. It uses online, open access videos and performs a formative and summative evaluation of the resources, with the latter being online, open and ongoing. The goal of this article is to offer a detailed description and critical analysis of the project, with an emphasis on the formative evaluation process. In this regard, the formative evaluation has allowed us to include blind and partially sighted (BPS) consultants in the process, improve resource quality, and enrich the interns’ learning experience.

Refuser d’être l’aveugle des autres Dynamiques et pratiques de l’écriture de soi, à l’encontre des représentations sociales de la cécité

This paper aims at exploring the autobiographical writing of blind, deaf-blind or partially sighted people from a sociopoetical perspective. It contends the following idea: for the authors to be considered, the first-person text opens up a space which allows them to refuse and deconstruct the conception of blindness shared by sighted persons. This literary process, from which the construction of a counter-discourse that can even go as far as subversion emerges, gives the author the opportunity to reappropriate his or her blindness beyond the imaginary, the myths and the fancies deriving from what is commonly understood and depicted as an impairment and a deprivation. Focusing on the fundamental concept of “préjugé de la cécité” (“prejudice of blindness”) developed by the French blind intellectual Pierre Villey, the article shall furthermore demonstrate that this common imaginary and these collective social representations are deeply rooted in culture and literature: They turn out to be an archetype one cannot easily avoid, inhabiting autobiographical texts and taking the form of stereotyped associations. This archetype is nevertheless swiftly challenged and deconstructed by the autobiographer’s writing, therefore leaving room for a representation of blindness from an internal point of view, based on individual experience and nurtured by everyday life. This paper thus argues that autobiographical space and textuality display a discursive power that the author can use as he or she wishes, in order to dismantle stereotypes and transform collective and social representations of blind people and blindness.

Audio Description from a discourse perspective: a socially relevant framework for research and training

The topic of this paper is Audio Description (AD) for blind and partially sighted people. I will outline a discourse-based approach to AD focussing on the role of mental modelling, local and global coherence, and different types of inferences (explicatures and implicatures). Applying these concepts to AD, I will discuss initial insights and outline questions for empirical research. My main aim is to show that a discourse-based approach to AD can provide an informed framework for research, training and practice.

La Audiodescripción desde la representación del conocimiento general. Configuración semántica de una gramática local del texto audiodescrito

Audio Description is a new text type which offers the prototypical receiver – blind or partially sighted people – a narrated representation of what is occurring at specific moments in the other audiovisual text to which it is subordinated. An AD script is subject to multiple subordination: to what is happening on the screen, to the distribution of silent spaces in the other text, and to the amount of time provided in each space. This fact, however, does not prevent the AD script from offering a representation of the general knowledge encoded by specific fragments of the film. Such a representation of knowledge, understood as the description in words or other signs of a specific reality, may serve as a semantic basis for the creation of a local grammar of AD scripts.

Technologies supporting independent moving inside buildings for people with visual impairment

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include disability and persons with disabilities for example partially sighted or blind. Disability is referenced in multiple parts of the SDGs, specifically in the parts related to education, growth and employment, inequality, accessibility of human settlements and buildings. The paper presents selected technologies that support independent movement blind people inside huge buildings. The paper will refer to two SDGs: No 9 and No 11. There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all with access to basic services, housing, friendly public buildings, transportation and more, even to people with eye disabilities. This paper presents selected systems for finding objects or places, recognizing objects inside rooms and navigation inside buildings based on nonradio and wireless technologies. The following technologies and solutions were presented and compared: physical items, smartphone cameras, laser rangefinders, pedestrian dead-reckoning, intelligent lighting, Wi-Fi, BLE beacons, magnetic fields and barometric pressure sensors.

Recreation and Therapy in Urban Forests—The Potential Use of Sensory Garden Solutions

Urban forests are not only woodlands or groups of trees, but also individual trees, street trees, trees in parks, trees in derelict corners, and gardens. All of which are located in urban and peri-urban areas and diversify the landscape and provide a wide range of social benefits. Sensory gardens play a specific therapeutic and preventive role. Designing such gardens as a recreational infrastructure element can successfully enrich urban forests. Following the principles of universal design may provide enjoyment for all city-dwellers, with special attention given to the needs of individuals with disabilities. We studied 15 gardens and one sensory path located in various regions in Poland. The inventory was carried out on the basis of the features considered important in spatial orientation by blind and partially sighted people. The results showed that the solutions used were only partly adequate for the needs of selected users. We found neither tactile walking surface indicators (e.g., communication lines and terrain), spatial models, nor applications in mobile devices. However, these could be useful for all visitors. We confirmed that although problems with the use of forest tourist space are dependent on the type of disability, by implementing the idea of universal design for all elements of recreational infrastructure, forests may be accessible for all users.

The relationship between visual function and performance in Para-swimming

Paralympic swimmers with vision impairment (VI) currently compete in one of three classes depending on their visual acuity (VA) and/or visual field. However, there is no evidence to suggest that a three-class system is the most legitimate approach for classification in swimming, or that the tests of VA and visual field are the most suitable. An evidence-based approach is required to establish the relationship between visual function and performance in the sport. Therefore, the aim of this study was to establish the relationship between visual function and performance in VI swimming. The swimming performance of 45 elite VI swimmers was evaluated during international competitions by measuring the total race time, start time, clean swim velocity, ability to swim in a straight line, turn time and finish time. Visual function was measured using a test battery that included VA, contrast sensitivity, light sensitivity, depth perception, visual search, and motion perception. Results revealed that VA was the best predictor of total race time, though the relationship was not linear. Decision-tree analysis suggested that only two classes were necessary for legitimate competition in VI swimming, with a single cut-off between 2.6–3.5 logMAR. No further significant association remained between visual function and performance in either of the two resulting classes. Results suggest that legitimate competition in VI swimming requires one class for partially sighted and another for functionally blind athletes.

Sound Art: Hearing in Particular

Extoling and promoting listening is deeply ingrained in sound art practice and discourse, even on occasion its raison d’être, where listening is understood as a wholly congenial, benign activity. This can be seen through the routine use of affirmative tropes such as, through listening we: connect, locate, are embodied, discern, are immersed or enveloped. And through specific listening methods such as Deep Listening, we are offered ‘expand[ed] consciousness to the whole space/time continuum of sound/silences’ (Oliveros, 2005, p. xxiv). Refocusing from the act of listening to the audiological—the mechanisms related to the sense of hearing—from the findings of the author’s recent research, in particular his review on the noise impact of high-speed hand dryers (Drever, 2013), the author feels obliged to assert that the contrary is a reality for many—hearing, from time to time or incessantly: perturbs, isolates, excludes, disconnects, disembodies, and dislocates, hearing hurts! This will be familiar for those living with hyperacusis, misophonia, and phonophobia, but it can also be the case for those with particular hearing needs such as the partially sighted, hearing aid users or those with sensitive hearing such as infants and ASD. Bringing audiology into the sphere of sound art, this chapter recognizes a prevailing sensitization of hearing in the culture at large, and proposes a paradigm for situating hearing that diverges from a singular, idealized, symmetrical model of hearing, the auraltypical, that has predominated. In its place, we are beginning to enjoy a fluidity and openness to diverse forms of hearing and sensitive hearers in sound art, on embracing the emerging agenda of auraldiversity.