In this episode Mariana interviewed Ana Tamayo, whose research focuses on audiovisual translation and accessibility in different modalities, and specifically on media accessibility and minoritised languages, mostly Basque and sign languages.
Transcription of the podcast episode:
Mariana: Hi, everyone, welcome to this new episode of the DARCI podcast, the podcast on disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries. My name is Mariana López and I’m a professor in sound production and post-production at the University of York. And today I’m delighted to be welcoming Dr. Ana Tamayo. Ana is an associate professor at the University of the Basque Country. Currently, she’s a member of the research groups TRALIMA/ITZULIK and collaborates with TRAMA and Galma. Her research interests focus on audiovisual translation and accessibility in different modalities. She’s especially interested in contributing to the research on media accessibility and minoritised languages, mostly Basque and sign languages.
Mariana: Hi, Ana, thank you so much for joining us in today’s episode. How are you doing?
Ana: Good, I’m doing fine. Thank you very much for having me. I’ve been hearing your podcast and I can’t believe that I am in one of your episodes. So thank you.
Mariana: Thank you very much. You’re the first person to have said that. So that is a big day for us. Ana, your PhD research was on captioning for deaf and hard of hearing children. Could you tell us a bit more about your work and what are the main differences between captioning for children and captioning for adults?
Ana: Yes, thank you for this question. Yes, my PhD was on captioning for Spanish deaf children. And the thing is that the current standard that we have in Spain, which is being revised right now, unlike recommendations that you may know from other countries or institutions, or for example, Ofcom, yes, the standard in Spain does not include specific recommendations for children. This is kind of a one size fits all standard. Although I think this will change very shortly because we are revising now that standard. But yes, as with many, as with many other audiences, the deaf audience is very diverse, not only because of age, there are other factors, but age is one of them. Yes. And what I found in my PhD more or less is this. For example, early initiation into bimodalism, that would be oral language plus sign language, is useful to comprehend captioning in an audiovisual environment. Also, because signers tend to be more efficient with visual information. I would recommend also a reduction of the subtitling speed to, for example, 12 characters per second. And also we found that some alternative resources that could be the use of avatars, emoticons, different underlining, bold italics, things like that, could be useful for character identification, for music, for paralinguistic features, etc. And also sometimes depending on the program, some adaptation of the vocabulary and syntax can also be useful. And what we found is that this alternative subtitles to the standard, whatever we may call it, yes, creative subtitles, freeform subtitles, can be more inclusive for diverse audiences. So what we found is basically different audiences have different needs and that needs to be taken into account. But of course, my PhD is from almost 10 years ago. So things have changed tremendously in audiovisual consumption. So what was true then might not be true anymore. And I am also a very different person from 10 years ago. So whenever I have to read my PhD, I read it not with embarrassment because I’m not embarrassed of my PhD, but also I’ve changed some of my views. And I see it sometimes I read it and I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe how ableist my point of view was. Yes. But yeah.
Mariana: But it’s interesting though that you touch upon that because I’ve had loads of conversations with different researchers and also thinking about my own work and it’s okay to kind of accept that one has changed as a person and that your points of view have changed. And I think that kind of in a way shows research growth in itself and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s really nice of you, I do appreciate kind of the openness and kind of …
Ana: Yes, of course.
Mariana: … reflecting on your previous work and thinking, oh, actually, you know what, that maybe wasn’t the right way of putting something on.
Ana: And maybe we will listen to this podcast 10 years from now, yes? And reflect on our opinions back then.
Mariana: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s part of the kind of research process as well and kind of that reflection upon oneself. Is this still okay? And that openness on changing. So thank you so much for sharing that. Now, I want to pick up on something that you said that sounds really fascinating, the idea of using emoticons for captioning. So can you give us an example of how that would work?
Ana: Yes, for example, we found it especially useful in puppets, in puppet shows because puppets have very rigid facial expressions, yes? They always look the same, yes? So you don’t really know from the image if they are sad or happy or angry. So we found it especially useful for transmitting what kind of emotions or communicative intention they had, the puppets, to put some kind of emoticons to see if they were saying something with anger or happily or whatever, yes.
Mariana: Ah, okay. That’s really, really, really interesting. And as you know, my field is mostly kind of audio description and work with visually impaired audiences. But when you work with deaf and hard of hearing children, how would you test what works best? How would you evaluate how it works best?
Ana: Yes, this was a difficult thing to do because, of course, first they are deaf audiences and they are diverse. So some of them communicated in sign languages, some of them orally. So we had to adapt to each way of communicating. And what we did were questionnaires. So questionnaires were interpreted their life into sign language if they needed to. And we had to make sure that the questions were understood. We did, of course, a pilot study beforehand to see if the questions were understood. But we needed to adapt to every situation. And we had children from 8 to 12 years of age. So also it’s not the same thing to work with 8-year-olds or 12-year-olds. And we had the problem, if you want to call it that way, of attention. It was not the same to do a test or to do an experiment on Monday at 11 a.m. than on Friday at 5 p.m. So sometimes you had to deal also with children being children. Not only deaf, but real children. So there were many factors there and we had to adapt to every situation.
Mariana: Well, sounds challenging. [both laughing] And one of the things I was reading about your work is that you did a research stay in Latin America, in a Latin American university. And I was really interested in this because one of the things that is of great interest to me is, in a worrying way, is how Eurocentric and North American-centric a lot of the research on disability, accessibility and representation is, which is something that is echoed in many disciplines where there’s a lot of work coming out from North America and Europe and very little represented from other parts of the world. So I was really pleased to see that you had chosen a Latin American university to do part of your work. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that experience, but also just your opinion. How could we be better as a field in making sure we don’t fall into that trap of considering North American and Eurocentric views as the views on a field and being more open?
Ana: Yes, totally. It looks like nothing has been done outside Europe and the United States, but I don’t think that is totally true. As with many other things, it may be just an illusion. And it is, like you said, it can be because of our European-centric view on all this. So I have a couple of opinions on this or thoughts on this. And the first one would be that it has to do a lot from where we are doing research. And I think it is very common. This was my case, but I think it is the majority of the cases in Europe. I think it is very common to get into media accessibility from translation and interpreting studies. And that was my case, but I said I think it is the majority of cases, at least in Europe. And in translation and interpreting studies, it is very usual to approach these studies as the target text being dependent on the original text and the notion of faithfulness, of equivalence is very present. And then I think we transfer that into media accessibility. And I think in Latin America and in other countries as well, I think a lot is being done and researched from film studies, for instance, or from other points of view. And I think it is easier if you take it from film studies to view accessibility as a form of creation, of transformation, rather than something that is dependent on the original. So I don’t see it only in research or practices coming from Latin America. When I read papers coming from the Netherlands, the UK, South Africa, USA, they also bring other perspectives into this. For example, a lot is being done in sign language translation and interpreting from the deaf studies point of view. And all these are very different perspectives that add value to our understanding of representation and accessibility. Translation has to be there, but other perspectives do. And I think in Latin America, they are bringing also these other perspectives. And the second thing is that I feel that a lot of work in Europe is being done top down. Yes, that is, we have a lot of legislation on disability and accessibility and standards and good practice documents, etc. And I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that there are not so many binding documents in Latin America. So a lot in Latin America is being done bottom up. Yes. And as it happens with any complex situation in life, this bottom up approach has positive and negative effects. I think the negative effects are easy to spot. So I like to focus on the positive aspects of it. So I think this bottom up approaches or practices bring so much creativity and flexibility to the way things are done. And we tend to see it from our European centric perspectives as isolated cases of creative practices. Yes. But I don’t think they are isolated when there are many out there. And I see this in practices coming from Uruguay, from Chile, from Argentina. Also a lot of sign language translation and interpreting is being done in Brazil, for example. And yes, when I was in Peru in this three month stay, I was, for example, amazed at how much sign language interpreting was being done on TV. I don’t know about the quality of that sign language interpreting because I do not communicate in Peruvian sign language, but I was amazed at the quantity compared to the quantity I was used to see in Spanish TV. Yes, this was in 2016 and things have changed a lot here too. But I was amazed at how much it was being done. And I think this connecting with previous points, yes, these practices and research come from very different backgrounds. Yes, disability studies, film studies, deaf studies, et cetera. And these are sometimes alien to our European view of what accessibility is, which comes once again from the translation interpreting. So what do we do to fix, if you want to say that way, this situation? I think that I see in practices from outside of Europe, I see a lot more transdisciplinarity than what we see here. And also a lot more flexibility. I don’t want to say that our view is wrong. It is another view, one view of the many possible. So I think we all need to keep working. Yes, maybe Europe in more bottom down, sorry, bottom up practices, maybe Latin America in up down practices, yes, and standard and good practices and all that. So things are being done. But I think, yes, we also have a very European centric approach to all this.
Mariana: Thank you. Thank you very much. And I think, yeah, I really liked your point about it’s about kind of this multiple, multiple perspectives. And I think you have a really good point about how where what the discipline someone doing research in media accessibility is from does very much have an impact on how they see a field and how they see a challenge in disability and accessibility that they want to work on. I mean, as you know, myself, I come from a kind of sound design background, but apply that to to accessibility. So I often kind of I’m very interested to see how that approach differs from people that come from audiovisual translation or disability studies and how the focus changes as a result. So that’s really, really interesting. And as with many disciplines, it’s about kind of, as you say, learning that there’s not one way of doing things, but there are several ways that adapt to audiences and geographical and cultural contexts.
Ana: Yes, exactly.
Mariana: Thank you so much for that. That’s really, really interesting. And as a lecturer in audiovisual translation, what do you feel are the key messages every AVT student should learn?
Ana: Well, this is a really good question. I don’t know if I’m able to answer it, but let’s see. [both laughing] So first, if we approach audiovisual translation, yes, not only accessibility, but audiovisual translation. I think two key points. There are many more, but first, I think they need to learn about filmmaking, film studies. We cannot jump directly to teaching how to do subtitles or how dubbing is done. First, they need to know what audiovisual communication is, how audiovisual products communicate or convey a meaning making, yes, process and product. So that would be the first thing. Of course, it depends on how much time we have to go deep into filmmaking or film studies. Yes, that’d be one thing. And the other thing is exactly what you said in the previous point. Yes. I think they need to learn, and this is a difficult one, they need to learn that in most cases, there’s not a single final perfect solution to the problem that they see.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: And traditionally, we had this view on this is a translation problem and translation as a problem solving process. And I am right now, and again, I might be, my view might be different in 10 years from now. Yes. But right now, I don’t like this approach of problem solving. Yes. And this will come, I think, later on in our interview as well. So I think reflection is key. And I see a lot of students, undergraduates and also in master’s program asking me, so what do I put here? How do I caption this? What do I do with this music? What is the solution to this? And I myself, and I say it every day that whenever I have a presentation in a conference, that I have more questions than answers. I don’t have the answers to all the questions that they put out there. Yes. And I think there is a lot of work for us, the trainers, to be done in the way they reflect on translation as a practice.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: So a practice that is complex by nature. And things that are complex don’t have a unique final solution. And complex are also the issues of accessibility, disability, inclusion and all that. So if we go from audiovisual translation to audiovisual translation for accessibility, again, we need to take into account these two things, but I think some more as well. I think, like I said, that they need to reflect, to question everything. And I think we need to start by shaking some of the grounds on which we feel comfortable.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: So I think we need to start talking, we need to start talking about film studies, yes, for audiovisual translation, but for media accessibility, we need to talk about ableism, representation, identity, participation, disability and disability models, inclusion, all that, yes? And we need to revise those concepts deeply and in relation to audiovisual content and audiovisual production. For example, asking ourselves questions like how do deaf people caption their production? Are disabled people being represented in audiovisual media? How are they being represented? Are they content with how they are being represented? And many more questions, yes? What do they need to participate in the filmmaking industry, for example? So we need to shake that ground. And also we need to shake the ground on where do we stand, yes? And that comes also with the previous questions as well. We need to reflect on our positionality on everything. Where do we come from? Who are we and what is our background in training, but not only in training, yes, in many other things in life. What is our standpoint? And then once we have shaken all that ground, I think we can start talking about technical and editorial issues like subtitle speed, text segmentation, et cetera. But we will be looking at all those technical aspects from a different angle. And I think many bottom-up approaches shake that ground and help us reflect on all that. And now if I may, I think normally we don’t approach training that way, but I think this is something that is being done currently. Pablo Romero Fresco, a well-known researcher in media accessibility, had the idea of launching a course on accessibility coordination, yes?
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: Like a new profile on media accessibility or filmmaking. And Pablo invited some of us, invited for example Flor Fascioli, Beru Rodríguez, Maria Jose Garcia Vizcaíno, and myself to come up with a training course for the Academia de Cine, which is the filmmaking academy, I don’t know how to translate it, based in Madrid in Spain. And here we have done it that way, yes? First we have started talking about all those concepts about ableism, et cetera, but also other concepts such as access intimacy, which is a concept that Pablo Romero Fresco is working on right now. Forced access, something that Maria Jose Vizcaíno talks about as well. Deaf filmmaking, for example, something that Beru Rodríguez works on. Accessible filmmaking, standard versus non-standard practices. Accessibility from pre-production stages, something that Flor Fascioli works on, for example. And many other things, yes? This was Pablo’s idea and he’s doing much of the classes himself, but I think this is a course in which we are all growing and learning, not just the trainees, but us the trainers as well. It’s been a course more like a conversation kind of thing, yes? In which we are all growing together and I think it is being, because we are not done yet with the course, but a great journey on how to re-signify all those concepts and going back to basic questions on ableism, et cetera, to then start working on technical aspects or on specific solutions to specific problems, yes?
Mariana: Thank you very much. And when are you hoping the course would launch?
Ana: Oh, we are doing it right now.
Mariana: It is being taught, okay.
Ana: Yes, it is being taught. I think we have two more weeks left, but what we want to do right now, I think we have 20 students, I think. But I think the next step will be to launch this course for deaf and blind audiences, yes? We are all able-bodied people training and the trainees are all able-bodied and we want to see how to adapt this course for deaf people, deaf signers also, and blind people.
Mariana: Oh, thank you very much. And if someone wanted to find out more about this course, where would they go? Is there any easy website or something they can type online to find it?
Ana: Yes, if you type Academia de Cine in Spanish, the course is in Spanish. But if you want, I will give you a link that maybe we can post later when this podcast is out there, yes? And through that link, they can find more about this course.
Mariana: Oh, thank you so much. That’s really, really exciting. And I think you touched upon kind of some really, really interesting things, including who delivers the training, who it is delivered for, but also aspects of positionality when we think about our research and our practice. And I have had the pleasure of listening to your presentations at several international conferences throughout the years. And I do honestly say I have always really admired how honest you are in your presentations and how you start. I’ve noticed you start a lot of your presentations with a positionality statement and on deaf culture and your own position as someone that is not part of the culture. And I always you were, I think, one of the very few people I have ever heard doing this. And I just wanted to say that I think it’s great that you do it. And I think it’s been for me very inspiring to to see this, because I think I do really agree with you that there is there’s a lot of work in the field of disability, accessibility and representation that does not fully engage with with audiences. And as you say, it’s about problem solving rather than creating a sense of a group of people coming together to work on something. And yeah, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for doing all that.
Ana: Thank you, Mariana. I’m not the only one. I think Kate Dangerfield also does it very often. Pablo Romero Fresco and others. Yes. And and whenever I send papers for a corporate paper to to get an article published, sometimes I think when deaf people have reviewed my paper, yes, if I hadn’t if I didn’t have anywhere in my paper that I was a hearing person coming from a hearing culture, they have asked me to put it out there. And and I think we need to start doing that more often.
Mariana: Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Your work has often explored sign language, sign language, interpreting and sign language translation as areas that are overlooked within audiovisual translation. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about why you think that is and what could we do to change it?
Ana: Yes, thank you very much for this question. I think sign language translation and interpreting in the media or sign language representation in the media, it’s been my passion in the last I would say since the pandemic, maybe in the last four years. And and I love exploring it. And although I am not a native signer, so I have four ideas on some of the reasons why this is happening. Probably there are much more. But to me, the more salient ones are these. First of all, the fact that signers have been denied access implicitly. Yes, not explicitly, but denied access to higher education institutions. So we need to rethink about our ableist academic environment as well. Yes, there are some or they’re almost non signing scholars, at least in Spain. I’m not saying the UK is different and other parts of the world are different. Yes. And in the USA, it is much more different. But in Spain, it is very, very noticeable the fact that signers have been denied access to higher education institutions. So if we don’t have signers out there, we don’t have signing people conducting research on sign language. Yes. And so also the second and that connects with my second point, which is that most academics working on translation and interpreting – again, this is from where we are approaching accessibility in Europe – do not communicate in sign language. So there is less research on that, too. Also from hearing academics. And and a third factor will be that sign language translation and interpreting has often been regulated by disability legislation. Yes. And as something that grants access to a disabled group of people. And many, many signers do not identify themselves as disabled. They identify as a linguistic minority. Yes. And not as a disabled group. So the fact that they are regulated by disability legislation, what it what it brings is that the right that they have is they have the right to access information through sign language translation and interpreting. But normally the right to sign in different environments is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the right to access information through sign language translation and interpreting, which is very different. And this brings up issues such as power relationships and etc. that adds complexity to the to the study. Yes, it is much more a much more complex situation than than studying translation and interpreting from oral languages. Yes. I’m not saying that research on translation and interpreting from oral languages are it’s easy, but this has adds another layer to it. Yes. So that complicates the research and training on that. And and as the fourth point, I would like to mention that audiovisual translation traditionally has been divided into two main categories. Yes. Revoicing and captioning and the different audiovisual translation modes were either a revoicing mode or a captioning mode. And traditionally, translation has been defined as a linguistic transfer from a written text into another written text. And interpreting is a transfer from an oral text into another oral text. So when we look at sign language translation and interpreting, where does it fit? It doesn’t fit in any other in any of these categories. Yes. So I think we need a definition of what audiovisual translation is to see if sign language translation and interpreting can fit into that. Yes. And of course, translation studies and audiovisual translation studies have not escaped phonocentrism and logocentrism. Yes. And and that reflects on the way research has been has been conducted. And that has made sign language translation and interpreting be left out of our discipline. And there might be many other reasons on why. Yes. But these four, I think, to me, at least nowadays are the most noticeable ones. But what can we do to change this? As you ask, yes. Well, it is being changed. I’m not saying that there are no changes on that. The traditional concept of what is translation, what is interpreting is being redefined. And we have, I would say, in the last four years, probably more research on this or more papers on this. And sign language translation and interpreting is slowly, but it is making its way into audiovisual translation. But of course, there is more to do. And what I would like to see is more training, more training programs at higher education institutions and universities that guarantee the inclusion of deaf signers as students and deaf lecturers. And for this, of course, we need to loosen up a little bit our academic core sets. Yes. Because it is not easy for them as they have been denied access. This is not easy. It’s not easy for them to enter academic institutions as lecturers. Yes. But also, we need more training on sign language for media accessibility researchers that do not communicate in sign language. And we need more training on sign language translation and interpreting at the university level.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: And I think another thing that we can do is actively look and guarantee spaces for sign languages in conferences, universities, film festivals, etc. And if we achieve all that, I think that will inevitably lead to more research being done by deaf signers.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: Also more research on sign language, on sign language interpreting and translation. But this is a very slow process, of course.
Mariana: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. It’s really, really interesting to listen to your thoughts on this. And another kind of topic that has been quite prominent, I was going to say in the last few months, but I think it’s been going on maybe for a year or more is what is what might be in the future or even now the role of AI in accessibility. So we’ve had, you know, I’ve definitely heard different discourses on this from it won’t have a lot of impact to know it’s going to have a huge impact on the field and the jobs of people that actually work on things like captioning. And I was wondering what your thoughts are.
Ana: Well, this is a tricky question, I have to say. [both laughing] That’s fine. I am not quite sure about my positionality on this yet. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately. But I am not sure also because I am not sure where it is heading. Yes.
Mariana: Yeah.
Ana: I totally understand the concerns of translators and interpreting and interpreters on this matter. And also the concerns from other creative industries, content creators, filmmakers, painters, anyone that is creating art or creating text. Yes, I totally understand their concerns on AI and mostly on generative AI. It is a complex issue. And as many other complex issues that we just talked about, this needs to be regulated. No question about that. It needs to be regulated. How to regulate that? I don’t have any ideas. [bohth laughing] And luckily for me, it is not for me to decide how to regulate this. But also, I think that we cannot naively think that AI is not going to shape our professions, all of our professions. Also, training and research and how we are going to do our training at university level. Everything is going to be changed. I think it’s going to be a much, much bigger change than when internet came along. Yes. And we need to bear in mind that. So, my approach to this, which of course can be wrong, is that if we think like machines, machines will take our jobs. [Mariana laughing] And this connects with what do we need to do on training?
Mariana: Yeah.
Ana: If students want a perfect solution to everything, these machines will do. Yes. If they want a unique, perfect solution that works in every case for something related to translation or accessibility, machines will slowly or rapidly, I don’t know, take our jobs. So, this goes back to this solution, problem solving, etc. Yes. And like I said before, my positionality right now is against that concept of translation as a problem solving activity. Yes. Universities have been focused very often into training problem finders. Yes. We have solutions in our society and we need to fix those solutions. Let’s train problem finders. And what machines don’t do, or at least don’t do yet, is question everything, navigate the uncomfortable, reflect on their positionality, rethink. So, what I think is we need more problem finders, not problem solvers. Yes. We have focused on problem solving, sorry, I think I said that wrong before. Yes. We have focused on finding or on training problem solvers and we need to train problem finders.
Mariana: Yes.
Ana: Ask questions. We are not there only to answer the question, but to ask questions. And accessibility and inclusion is something different from problem solving activity. Yes. Accessibility is not a solution to any problem. It’s a journey. Pablo Romero Fresco very often talks about that. Yes. Accessibility as a journey, as a trial and error journey, as art, as an intimate process. Yes. And this is not new. This is not from 2024. Yes. Mia Mingus, for example, has a blog post, I think it is from 2011, talking about access intimacy. Yes. Accessibility as an intimate process. And I believe that is the new path for our field, for the field of accessibility. Because there are many things being done with AI. Automatic speech recognition, for example, is working very well with languages such as English or Spanish, for example. Different captioning for different needs. That is going to be done. AI is being used as a conversation partner with auto description for traveling. Yes. I just saw a video the other day on that. AI is now capable of deciphering the tone of voices to create alternative form free subtitles. In sign language translation and interpreting, we have examples such as sign apps, which is an app for automatic sign language translation and interpreting. Zelda, which is a virtual assistant, like Siri kind of thing, and many, many others. And I always think that the end does not justify the means. And that applies to AI as well.
Mariana: Yeah.
Ana: I think that is one of the core values that we need to have on this. Yes. The end does not justify the means. But sometimes that core value that I have in me, it’s been shaken as well. Yes. Because sometimes I see that the end can be more disability justice. Not just accessibility, but disability justice. And the end can be a more inclusive and accessible world. And I see that as a hopeful end. Of course, there are many evil ends to all this. Yes. Stealing intellectual property, for example. Scams. There are many evil things being done with AI. But as with everything, yes, there is light and there is shadow in this. And the possibilities to me are endless, both positive and negative. And of course, I’m talking here from my privileged position, yes, from my ivory tower. I have a permanent position in my uni, yes, and I can talk from there. I cannot talk from any other standpoint. I can only talk from my standpoint. But to me, it brings more expectation than fear. Okay. We need to regulate it, of course, but I cannot wait to see what can be done with this. Of course, we need to regulate it. We need to keep in mind that we cannot steal the intellectual property of content creators or of translators or filmmakers, et cetera. And I don’t know how to regulate that. But I have more expectation than fear on this.
Mariana: Yes. Thank you very much. I’m sure throughout future episodes of the podcast, this might come up again, because it’s such a topic that is taking up the attention of so many people, though I have to naively confess that I feel a little bit kind of tired of opening the news every morning and there’s a new AI story out there. And I sometimes wonder if it’s distracting us from other potentially from other from other things.
Ana: Probably. Yes.
Mariana: It’s a wider question. So kind of you mentioned loads of wonderful professionals, researchers, practitioners throughout today’s episodes. But is there anyone else you’d like to whose work you’d like to highlight someone that you say people should definitely go and read connects to this person’s work and why? Well, I am reading a lot lately on deaf studies, disability studies, signers, et cetera. So if you want, maybe orally is not the best way to put it out there. But if you want, I can make a list of some not only researchers, but maybe also podcast and one can listen to apart from this one, of course, and filmmakers may be out there that bring inspiring, inspiring ways of of promoting all this. But I totally recommend, for example, works by Mia Mingus, who works on access intimacy, the deaf artist Christine Soon Kim, I don’t know how to pronounce it, but she’s doing wonderful work on viewing accessibility from a deaf perspective. And I really I am really enjoying lately reads of John Henner, who passed away last year, but he did a lot of writing with Octavian Robinson, and they have some some very inspiring views on crippling with stakes on on accessibility as a spectacle and many other things. Yes. And and I do have other deaf researchers that I follow, but I can give you a list that maybe we can post after we finish.
Mariana: Yes. Yeah. So we will add some some people to connect to and follow when we post the transcripts on our blog post. So the next thing is, what’s next for you? Do you have any exciting projects you can tell us about?
Ana: Yes. Well, priority number one for me is to finish my book.
Mariana: Oh, I’m excited. So you’re writing a book. So that’s good.
Ana: Yes. Whenever I find the time. Yes, I am. I need to finish my book. I am writing a book on sign language in order to use translation. Both both the representation of sign language and sign language translation and interpreting. This is priority number one. By the way, I heard that you have finished or almost finished your book. So congrats on that!
Mariana: [Mariana laughing. Yes. I mean, I should clarify that it’s not about disability and accessibility, but thank you!
Ana: So I hope to finish my mind by 2024. Let’s see if I can accomplish that.
Mariana: Exciting times.
Ana: Yes. And I am also involved in other projects. For example, right now I am in a project called UnivAc. I will give you the link as well. This is a project led by Blanca Arias Badia from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. And the project is about accessibility in higher education institutions. To me, what it is more exciting about this project, from my point of view, is the sign languages and deaf signers occupying more space, research and training in universities. This is a very difficult goal to achieve, I know, but I think we are in such a need of elevating sign languages to higher education institutions. So I want to keep working on not training on sign language, but giving more space to sign language in higher education institutions, in research and all that. So I also want to keep working on all the issues that we talked about, like ableism, representation, identity, all that, in relation to sign languages mostly, but also maybe taking into account other minority languages, for example Basque. And I want to keep working on issues on representation, disability, inclusion, all that that we have talked about. So I look forward to…
Mariana: You are going to be very busy.
Ana: I always am. [both laughing] But yes, I look forward to keep growing, to keep changing, changing my opinions and evolving, hopefully, yes.
Mariana: And I have one last question that is one I like asking all our guests, and it is, what are your hopes for the future of disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries?
Ana: Well, I’m going to answer from where I am now, which is more focused on the sign language aspect of accessibility and all that. So my hope is to see more deaf people out there, especially more deaf signers in general, but also more signing in the creative industries, and especially in filmmaking. And I would like to see more research and more training on sign language translation and interpreting, and especially on sign language translation and interpreting in the creative industries and in audiovisual media. And I would like to see in general more deaf and disabled people being trained and doing research and conducting accessibility. So also this, my hope is to see a normalisation of all that. I would like to see how we, hopefully quickly, but I don’t think that is going to be quickly, but I would like to see how we get rid of tokenism, of the spectacle of access, all the inspirational forms related to accessibility. Accessibility is great, but we do not need to romanticise it. Yes, this romantic aura surrounding accessibility, and especially sign language translation and interpreting, because I think sign language brings a lot of this romantic aura to it.
Mariana: Yeah.
Ana: I think it does more harm than good sometimes. Yes. So I have more hopes related to accessibility in general, but these are my specific hopes related to deaf people and sign language in the creative industries.
Mariana: Thank you so much, Ana. It’s been a pleasure as always to kind of hear how much passion there is in your work for working on accessibility through a lens, a focus on social justice. So thank you so much for sharing all that passion, that wonderful research and practice with us. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you today.
Ana: Thank you, Mariana. I had a wonderful, wonderful time. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Mariana: Thank you so much everyone for tuning in for this brand new episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope you tune in next month for another wonderfully exciting episode. Thank you so much!
Additional resources
In addition to the authors above, Ana also recommends Annelies Kusters, James Woodward, Jemina Napier, Maartje de meulder, Maya de Wit and Michael Skyer. Ana also recommends the content creators and podcasts as follows. Socially Sound (podcast in BSL), Discast (Spanish podcast on disability) Disability and… (UK podcast on disability), Not an angry deaf person (Blog by Octavian Robinson), Pupa Studio Creativo (content creators based in Chile with focus on media accessibility and who work with deaf translators and interpreters) and Núcleo Interdisciplinario de Comunicación y Accesibilidad (NICA) (research and training group of scholars based in Uruguay with focus in media accessibility).
