Collaborative Networks to Provide Media Accessibility: the Potential of Social Subtitling

Audiovisual products are becoming more and more accessible to all types of users. As far as audiovisual communication is concerned, nowadays a considerable number of audiovisual programs viewers can watch in Spain are usually made accessible by means of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH), audiodescription (AD) or sign language interpreting (SLI). In the context of the university, the actual need to make audiovisual products accessible to the whole community becomes pivotal, given the importance of addressing two major issues: firstly, meeting the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing by being able to access information via subtitles; and, secondly, producing subtitles for those not linguistically competent in the corresponding L2; AD and SLI are more complicated to implement in this setting, and that is why the present approach deals with subtitling alone. In particular, this paper delves into the results obtained from a social subtitling project, conducted in 2014 and implemented at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), where volunteer students subtitled videos both individually and collaboratively so as to make them accessible to a wider audience. The analysis of the qualitative data gathered complements previous research in the field and sheds more light into the potential of social subtitling of audiovisual programs produced at the university so as to proceed to fruitful further research