The use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies and, in particular of VR360 content, can provide great benefits in the society. This particularly applies to the culture and heritage sectors, where venues, goods and events can be digitalized to provide hyper-realistic and engaging experiences, anywhere and anytime. Despite significant advances in the field of VR, there is still an unexplored aspect which is crucial for every service and experience where user interaction is expected: accessibility. This article firstly reviews the needs, challenges and limitations for making VR360 experiences accessible. Based on these facts, an end-to-end platform to efficiently integrate accessibility services within VR360 content is presented. The platform encompasses all steps from media authoring to media consumption, but special attention is given to the accessibility-enabled VR360 player, as it is the end user interaction interface. The presentation modes for the supported access services (like subtitling, audio description and sign language), interaction modalities and personalization features supported by the player are described. To conclude, the availability of newly created and adapted culture-related accessible VR360 content is explored, as a proof of the potential of the contributions work in this sector.

Fresco (2013) Effects of text chunking on subtitling: A quantitative and qualitative examination, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 21:1, 5-21, Our work serves as an assay of the visual impact of text chunking on live (respoken) subtitles. We evaluate subtitles constructed with different chunking methods to determine whether segmentation influences comprehension or otherwise affects the viewing experience. Disparities in hearing participants' recorded eye movements over four styles of subtitling suggest that chunking reduces the amount of time spent reading subtitles.

Audio description (AD) has established itself as a media access service for blind and partially sighted people across a range of countries, for different media and types of audiovisual performance (e.g. film, TV, theatre, opera). In countries such as the UK and Spain, legislation has been implemented for the provision of AD on TV, and the European Parliament has requested that AD for digital TV be monitored in projects such as DTV4ALL [www.psp-dtv4all.org] in order to be able to develop adequate European Accessibility policies. One of the drawbacks is that in their current form, AD services largely leave the visually impaired community excluded from access to foreign-language audiovisual products when they are subtitled rather than dubbed. To overcome this problem, audio subtitling (AST) has emerged as a solution. This article will characterise audio subtitling as a modality of audiovisual localisation which is positioned at the interface between subtitling, audio description and voiceover. It will argue that audio subtitles need to be delivered in combination with audio description and will analyse, systematise and exemplify the current practice of audio description with audio subtitling using commercially available DVDs.

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Media accessibility is becoming mainstream. While it cannot compete for popularity with the two original fields –architecture and design accessibility– it is slowly gaining acknowledgment. Subtitling was and still is the most popular media access service. In recent years, more services have been joining the alternative possibilities to access information. New technologies have also increased the number of services, and Easy to Read is proposed in this article as a new candidate to join the list of services. This article will start by describing Easy to Read, and understand its approach as: a translation modality, a linguistic variation or as a service. The second part of the article presents many accessibility services and Easy to Read features. In the third part, new hybrid services are proposed. These are the result of adding to existing access services a layer of Easy to Read creating a higher degree of accessibility. Any accessibility service aiming to facilitate comprehension will improve and optimize its function by leaning on Easy to Read. The article finishes offering many examples to secure a rapid uptake of the service across the different accessibility fields, from design to web accessibility or transport.