Media accessibility : current research and new hybrid scenarios

In my presentation I aim to map current media accessibility research with a focus on projects in which TransMedia Catalonia research group is involved. I will present research opportunities and challenges linked to new hybrid access modes, new technologies and environments, and discuss how new methodologies can be implemented. Beyond purely research projects, I will also stress out the need for projects focused on training. More specifically, I will talk about the work done or to be done in two types of projects. On the one hand, European and national research projects on access services in different media. More specifically, I will present examples from two projects: IMAC (http://www.imac-project.eu/), a European project in which access services in immersive media are investigated, and NEA (http://pagines.uab.cat/nea/), a project focusing on audio description and audio subtitling in which electrophysiological measures have been analysed to elicit user emotional activation. On the other, I will briefly present three projects on training for access services, namely: ACT (http://pagines.uab.cat/act/), which has defined the profile of the accessibility expert for the scenic arts and has created a MOOC currently available on Coursera; ADLAB PRO (https://www.adlabpro.eu/), a project which aims to define the profile of the professional audio describer and create tranining materials, and EASIT, a project that starts on September 2018 aiming to research easy reading with a focus on audiovisual content