No abstract

Work for inclusive, quality education and the reduction of inequalities is among the prioritized lines of action promoted by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (2015). In the context of higher education, persons with sensory disabilities who study and work at universities face daily accessibility challenges when interacting with their pervasive digital environments. The ongoing UNIVAC research project aims to analyse the measures taken by Spanish universities to overcome such challenges, as well as to explore areas of improvement in accessibility at university. This paper presents the project’s aim and scope, and proposes the adoption of the cross-disciplinary user journey approach as a form of methodological innovation in accessibility research in higher education.

Participatory accessibility, i.e., the involvement of users in the design, making, and validation of accessible products and services, has been encouraged under the premise that it would ultimately prove beneficial both in terms of usability and user satisfaction. This article examines the role of users and Disabled People Organisations (DPOs) in the design and validation of access services by providing the results of four in-depth interviews with representatives of non-profit organisations active in Catalonia. The main topics covered in the interviews include users’ views on design, production, and validation processes, the training and professionalisation of user consultants and validators, and users’ input on standards. The results show that users are mainly involved in validation actions today. They are only rarely considered in early stages of the production chain. DPOs see the occasional exceptions to this trend as a positive indicator that processes may change in the near future. They demand the true integration of persons with disabilities in all the links in the production chain and, crucially, in management positions, as the only way to effectively cater for users’ needs. Lay summary It is commonly agreed that end users, including persons with disabilities, need to be involved in the creation of products or services that aim to be accessible. This is because nobody is more familiar with their specific needs than themselves. This article presents results of four interviews with representatives of non-profit organisations in Catalonia who actively work with persons with disabilities. To begin, we ask them to offer their definition of accessibility as end users. After that, we ask them to what extent they think users are involved in the design of new products and services, as well as on their role in validating such products and services once they are made available to the general public. They explain that the participation of persons with disabilities often comes too late, i.e., when products are already designed, and that there is still a big task to do in terms of truly integrating persons with disabilities in management positions, which they see as the way to improve the present situation.

Mixed methods have an established trajectory in the social sciences. Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility (MA) Studies are also increasingly applying the “third research paradigm” (Johnson et al., 2007, 112). Yet, publications in our field often fail to discuss the mixed-method nature of the study in depth, be it because of space limitations or a lack of deliberate integration of the methods. Concurrently, MA has seen a boom in experimental research, as descriptive approaches have given way to reception and user-centred studies that engage in the cognitive processes and immersion of audiences (Orero et al. 2018). This article proposes a methodological basis for MA researchers to design studies employing physiological instruments within a mixed methods framework. The core mixed methods designs (convergent, explanatory, and exploratory) are presented, and examples of their applications to research employing physiological instruments are discussed.

In opera, a multimodal art form by nature, meaning is constructed by the synthesis of its musical, verbal, visual and dramatic components. Audio description (AD) is an audiovisual translation modality that provides blind and visually impaired patrons with access to the visual elements of the play. The first aim of this pilot study is to conduct a corpus analysis to define the lexico-grammatical patterns of opera AD in the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Teatro Real in Madrid. The second aim is to perform a semiotic analysis to elucidate the hierarchisation of the action, the parole and the visual aesthetics of the production in the AD scripts. The conclusions suggest a number of linguistic and semiotic idiosyncrasies that are shared with other AD modalities, as well as some key divergences.