In this interview, Mariana interviewed Sarah McDonagh, a researcher specialising in media accessibility, cultural heritage and sustainability.
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 postproduction at the University of York. And today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Sarah McDonagh.
Sarah McDonagh is a researcher specialising in media accessibility, cultural heritage and sustainability. Her research interests include digital heritage, particularly contested heritage and the intersections between sustainability and accessibility. Sarah has published a wide array of topics in the media accessibility field, including accessibility and contested heritage, accent and audio description, media accessibility as a pedagogical tool, easy-to-read adaptations and climate communication, and participatory practises in the archive.
Over the years, she has been involved in several national and European projects. She has collaborated with various European partners in the EU-funded Accessibility Culture and Training Act Project. She has also worked with the Prisons Memory Archive PMA to create accessible content for people with diverse sensory abilities and to address important ethical concerns related to heritage management and preservation. Additionally, Sarah has been part of the Horizon 2020 GreenScent Project – Green Citizen Engagement for a Green Future, where she collaborated with an international team to engage people with environmental issues in their local communities to the development of accessible apps, digital platforms, and educational resources.
Currently, Sarah is working in Alfie — Assessment of Learning Technologies and Frameworks for Intelligent and Ethical AI, which seeks to improve the EU’s understanding and management of AI by creating a platform for experts to collaborate and share knowledge. The project will also develop an accessible AI tool to help people build fair and reliable AI models. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing?
Sarah: I’m very good. Thank you so much for having me.
Mariana: It’s always a pleasure talking to you and to talk about your work. And it brings me back to the first time we met, and do correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was in Belfast about 7 or 8 years ago when you were doing your PhD. Was that when we first met?
Sarah: Yeah, it was. I remember because I had a really bad cold at the time.
Mariana: Oh, did you?
Sarah: Yeah, I was really suffering. But you were very nice to me. [laughing] And I really appreciated this. Because obviously, I was just getting my PhD so it was really good to have a one to one with you. Because yeah, I really admire your work, and your conference is the first conference that I spoke at as a researcher, so my first big, you know, experience presenting my research, and it was such a positive experience for me. So yeah, thank you. [laughing]
Mariana: Oh, thank you so much. And I’m excited to have a chance to catch up because we haven’t had a proper chat about your work for a while, so I have some questions for you, of course. So, the first thing I’d like to ask you about is the work you did in relation to the Prison’s Memory Archive and the intersection between accessibility and controversial traumatic heritage, if that’s the word, or I think you use the word contested heritage as well. Could you tell us a bit about this archive and the work you did but also what are the specific opportunities and challenges provided when working on accessibility in this type of heritage?
Sarah: Thank you for the question. It’s a good question. I should say that this was part of my PhD, so I worked on an archive. It was an audio-visual archive called the Prison’s Memory Archive, as you said, or PMA for short, and that is based in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, and it’s basically an audio-visual archive that documents the prison system in the north of Ireland during the conflict, which is known as the Troubles. So the Troubles is for those who might not know or might not be familiar: It’s a 30-year conflict that took place in the north of Ireland. So it began in the late 1960s and then ended in formally ended in 1998 after the Good Friday Agreement. So, over the course of this period, there was like extreme violence in society. So, it’s estimated that probably around 3600 were killed, and over 40,000 people were injured. So, if you look at Northern Ireland itself, it’s a very small place, and this level of violence really, really impacted communities and people on a very personal level. So, within that context, then, the PMA worked with people who had some connection to two prisons in the north of Ireland. So the first one was Armagh Gaol, which was for women, and then the other one was Maze Long Kesh, which was for men. Now, I primarily worked on the Maze Long Kesh prison, which was the men’s prison during the Troubles. And it was a prison, really, that is still controversial to this day in the North. It held political prisoners throughout the course of the Troubles. And a lot of really important events or significant events within that history took place within the walls of the prison. So, for example, there were, you know, prison escapes. There was the hunger strike in the 1980s, which was a really significant turning point in the course of the Troubles. So, the place itself still remains highly, highly contested. And I think a really good illustration of that is when we talk about the afterlife of the prison. So, it closed in the early 2000s after the Good Friday Agreement because, as part of that agreement, political prisoners were released. So, a lot of those who were held there were released in the early 2000s. So then the prison site was actually empty. And there was a lot of discussion about, “Okay, what will we do with this prison site?” and the suggestion was to do something similar to what they have on Robben Island in South Africa, so to create a peace and reconciliation centre where people can reflect on the place, the history as a sort of inclusive space to talk about the past. However, that didn’t quite work out because of… basically, because the talks broke down between the main political sort of stakeholders within that, so Sinn Féin and the DUP, who are the Democratic Unionist Party. And basically, the main sort of debate that was happening was around the meaning of the prison. So, what does the prison mean to people in the Northern part of Northern Ireland? So, for some people, they see it as, you know, a place where Republicans, you know, fought against the British occupation of, you know, the North. They protested against their conditions. So they see it as, you know, an important place within the Republican history. However, for other people. They see it as potentially becoming, I quote a DUP politician, “a shrine to republicanism.” So there’s these two antagonistic forces, you know, that really kind of exemplified the toxic, sort of like, you know, discussion around the prison. It just became politically toxic, so they dropped all plans to have a peace and reconciliation centre. So, now there’s… it’s just left there. It still is just left there derelict. So I suppose within that context then, I worked with the TMA because they had video tours of the actual prison site of the Maze Long Kesh prison, so these are sort of just visuals of different buildings within the prison so you can see the buildings, the architecture, the environment. And they asked me to create audio descriptions of three clips. So one was the compound, the hospital H Blocks. And in these clips, there’s no narration. It was just, you know, just the visuals of these prison buildings. And that was a very conscious decision, of course, because, you know, as I said, the prison is still politically quite toxic, like, we have different names for the prison. You know, you might have noticed, I said, “Maze Long Kesh.” I use both, but some people call it the Maze, and some people call it Kesh. So, as soon as you try and describe this place, you find yourself getting caught in the weeds in terms of political terminology and what that says about you and your ideology. So, on paper, I was supposed to do audio descriptions. So okay, I described the visuals, ideally for people who might not be able to access the visuals, maybe they’re blind or partially blind, or even just people who are not familiar with the history of this place and maybe its significance in the North. So I started trying to do that and then immediately ran into those obstacles around terminology. So, what words do I use to describe this place? What do I describe, actually? Because I’m just describing a building. But of course, this building has real historical political significance for people in the North. For example, the hospital building. That’s where the hunger strikes happened. So, for me not to acknowledge that would mean that I’m ignoring that part of that history. But for me to include that, does that mean that I’m promoting Irish Republicanism? So, these are the sort of things that I came up against, and I really realised I was like, “Wow. Okay. Audio description is maybe not necessarily fit for purpose in this context, and maybe I should be a bit more creative about how I go about this.” Because I looked at a lot of, you know, audio descriptions, you know, guidelines around how to describe things. Of course, these are for television, so much more established media. I was working on something quite new in terms of, you know, cultural heritage and the audiovisual, you know, video tours. So, I tried to kind of take what I could from the guidelines, but also think and work with the people from the PMA to think about how we could represent the prison. So, how could we make it engaging? But also be aware of the, you know, political context that we were operating in and what words to use. So I started working on terminology with them to talk about, like, what could we use potentially in the end. What we ended up doing was we used, I created, like, an audio instruction for each building. So I described the building, you know, its history, et cetera and then have an audio description or an audio guide of the actual video tour, but within that, then, I integrated participant testimonies from people who were a part of the archive. So, for example, you could have, you know, let’s say, the circle, which is the main entrance to, you know, a prison building. It’s where the prison officers are. So you could get the recollections, the interpretation of a prison officer of that space. And then that could be juxtaposed with the prisoners’ experiences in that space. So, within that one space, you have different voices having different interpretations of that same place. And I find that that works actually quite well because that really captures the, you know, the difference of opinions and the difference of experiences in one place. And using that with audio description was very interesting for me because then I was like, “Okay, well now I really realise that we can be, we can do something a bit different, and we can use audio description in a different way.” And also, sort of realising that, “yes, objectivity is very important, but we’re all subjective.” The terms that we use to portray are subjective, and we should just acknowledge that rather than try to ignore that. That’s really what I came to… that was the conclusion I came to sort of at the end of the PhD, which was, oh, I loved it because it was just so interesting. It started off like a very simple task that just turned into three or four years of pulling my hair out, trying to, you know, choose my words very carefully around how I explained things. So yeah, I mean, that’s everything kind of in a nutshell, I suppose, yeah.
Mariana: Oh, this is fascinating to me because I’m also very interested in, as you know, the use of sound in heritage sites for engagement. And it’s really interesting to hear you speak about, you know, how difficult it is to make choices and that acknowledgement that everything we say really has some sort of connotation, especially when we’re thinking about sites that have such complex and contested history. So, thank you so much for sharing this. And I have also been following with loads of interest your work on environmental sustainability considerations within the accessibility sector, which is a topic that we’re now starting to hear a little bit more about. But it’s fairly new, I think. Can you tell us about the work you do in this field?
Sarah: Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s quite recent because I started working on a new project. Well, it’s almost finished now called Green Scent, and it’s an educational project really all around how to engage with people to make more sustainable choices in their day-to-day lives. So, thinking about sustainability day-to-day, and I suppose working on that project, really made me think about sustainability. I’m talking about, like, ecological sustainability in terms of… combined with accessibility. So, thinking about, like, I suppose there are two sides to this thinking from the side of service providers. So what they can do to maybe minimise their ecological impact, let’s say, but also thinking about end users. So, how we can make sure that things related to ecology and environmental concerns include people with disabilities. So I found that really interesting, and I’m still working it out now, in terms of, like, thinking about that as a sort of as a research sort of track, but I think if I start in terms of like service providers, I think because where I come from, media accessibility and also translation and what we’ve seen recently… well in recent years is the increase in the use of technology. So, we’re using more and more technology to create, you know, translations and also media access services and what these technologies rely on is, you know, large language models that use a lot of electricity but also water, something that I didn’t know before I started.
Mariana: I didn’t know that.
Sarah: Yeah, well, I came across this researcher, actually. He used to be in DCU, but I think he’s in Warsaw now. Matt Reimland and he got me interested in this whole thing around the ecological impact of, like, neural machine translation. So thinking about like the how much, you know, computational power that these engines that we use to do translations or you know access services, how much they actually use and really thinking about the ecological costs of that. Because at the moment, there are things, like, we talk about AI is obviously the big thing now, and that uses a lot of energy, and currently, there is a massive emphasis on things like performance. So they want to gain in terms of making it more efficient, more, you know… all those things. But actually, there are only really small gains, and the cost of those small gains is immense in terms of energy. So now there are things now that we talk about in terms of Red AI and Green AI. So, Green AI really is… Red AI really focuses on, you know, escalating computational, you know, costs, whereas Green AI more is about really having the trade-off between performance and efficiency. So okay, we obviously can use these AI models, but why don’t we choose one that is… doesn’t use as much computational power to actually do the work that we need to do? So, thinking about those sorts of things and thinking about, you know, we do a lot of stuff on the cloud and thinking about energy and electricity, like the cloud is an actual physical thing, you know, it is data centres that use an immense amount of electricity and water as well as, you know, the cabling and the wiring for all these things, the hardware in terms of our computers that we use and where is it extracted from. So thinking about things more as, you know, from cradle to grave, a sort of life cycle of all these things and thinking about the impact of each stage within that cycle. Now, that’s the sort of service provider’s side of things. But then I think it’s very important and interesting as well to think about the end user, right? So we think about, like, for example, this week here in Spain, there were, you know, really devastating floods. But what was the situation for people with disabilities who might not have been able to access information about the floods? So, thinking about how we can make sure that emergency response systems are actually accessible for people with disabilities. And making sure that they’re counted whenever we start planning for climate emergencies or any sort of climate event. And how we do that is obviously involving them in the planning stages, but also doing our research, making sure that our research on anything related to climate is disability inclusive so that their needs are actually taken into consideration. You know, I would listen to… I now organise a conference all around this called the Green Digital Accessibility Conference, and we’re having it again here in Barcelona in December, but these are the sort of, yeah, these are the sort of things that we’re talking about. But I remember last year we had people from Turkey. There was a woman presenting from Turkey, and she spoke about the earthquakes that happened there a few years back and the experience of deaf people there. Because the emergency services would call out to people to, you know, shout if you can hear me onto the rubble. But the deaf people, they couldn’t hear them, so they couldn’t access life-saving, you know, a life-saving service. So it was thinking about these things, but these things, you know, we have to plan for them. We have to… we have to really consider these from the beginning of anything we do because this is going to happen more and more.
Mariana: Yeah.
Sarah: So, it needs to be part of the conversation. So I mean, that’s kind of what I’m… that’s my line of interest now, but it’s, you know, another interesting field to explore, I think, and also one that is incredibly, incredibly important right now.
Mariana: Yeah, and this is another field that fascinates me, and I think it’s really important that you talked about the environmental cost that AI has because I think we don’t read enough in the news about this. It’s all about, you know, AI, this and that, should we worry, should we not worry, but, actually, the environment is not as heavily featured as it should be. I’ve only read one or two articles in news outlets that I thought, “Oh, actually, that really explains the cost it has to the environment clearly.” And when I sometimes mention that to people, I realise they were a bit surprised to learn the impact these computational developments have on the environment without even them noticing or thinking about it. I do feel, though, that there’s still… the awareness is small in the media accessibility sector, and this kind of surprises me a little bit because I get involved in the… I am involved in BAFTA’s Albert work. Albert for those that don’t know, is the UK’s kind of national organisation for the kind of helping the film and TV industries reduce their impact on the environment. And this has been around for a very long time, and the awareness of the film and TV industries on the environment is quite high. But then when we think about media accessibility for those industries, they generally aren’t, like, they’re not included in those frameworks because they generally sit outside the film and TV workflows, but they don’t tend to feature very much elsewhere. And I guess my question is, why do you think there is so little awareness in this field?
Sarah: Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. I think… you know what, I think it’s kind of like out of sight, out of mind. Because a lot of the time, for language or access service providers, they’re working from like their computer or, you know, using the Internet to do these, to do their work. So, I don’t think we really realise, you know, the actual cost of doing those things when we’re just doing them from home where we can’t actually see the impact of like our actions on the environment first hand. Because I’m sure you know in film sets you probably have like the actual physical, you know, the rubbish after a day of filming or something like that, whereas we don’t have that in terms of if you’re just working at home on your laptop. You’re not aware that you know the energy that you’re using might be coming from, you know, whole-powered electricity because you can’t see it. It’s not there in front of you. So I think that is probably one of the things. But also, I think, like, I think it’s important to be aware of that, absolutely, but I think it would be ridiculous to say to, you know, accessibility experts or access service providers that, “no, you can’t use the Internet anymore because it’s bad for the environment, so you can’t do your job.” So, what I think we should probably, like, shift our focus on is making sure that we actually use our work to do things like serve disabled people in situations where maybe their safety is at risk in terms of, you know, climate events or just things like making sure that, you know, programmes on maybe the environment are accessible to them through subtitles or captions or, you know, audio descriptions. So really, making those trade-offs between yes, of course, we all need to use, you know, energy to do our work, but where we going to put that energy towards, are we going to, you know, put it towards, you know, just regular day-to-day work, like your subtitling, or you’re doing whatever for a film, or do you want to do it more in terms of making sure that, you know, emergency response services are accessible to people. So, really, I think we should need to shift our focus. Because yeah, I think we just need to be, like, very practical and promote accessibility now in terms of climate planning. I really feel that because people with disabilities are excluded a lot in terms of climate emergency planning. And there’s research from researchers from McGill University who looked at a lot of the climate mitigation plans of all the countries that signed up to the Paris Agreement, right? So they had all these goals in terms of, you know, being more ecologically sustainable, et cetera. And honestly, a lot of them did not even mention people with disabilities. They were not mentioned. Or if they were, it was only in passing, so that just shows that they weren’t thought of. They were ignored. I know I’m bringing it back to more like higher-level things. But I think in terms of advocacy, I think that’s very important now in terms of like raising people with disabilities voices as much as possible and just giving them access to, you know, valuable information that they need, that we all need, in terms of the climate.
Mariana: Yeah. And it kind of speaks to that concept of of climate injustice, isn’t it?
Sarah: Exactly.
Mariana: … how different groups are affected differently. So this is really, really interesting. And it brings me really nicely to my next question. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about a project you’ve just mentioned, that is Green Scent Project. Can you tell us a little more about it?
Sarah: Yeah, of course. So Green Scent is a project… it’s a H2020 European project, and its basic aim is to engage people more and educate people more to make more sustainable choices in their lives. So, how are we doing that? We’re doing that kind of multiple ways. We’re doing that through creating educational materials that people can use. It’s, I should say, it’s aimed at people of all ages, so people in primary school, secondary school, university, and, you know, people working. So, creating educational materials. So people can use it to reflect on how they can be more sustainable. And within that as well, we have developed apps. So we’ve developed, like, air quality apps as well as apps in terms of citizen journalism around the environment. And also, we’re developing a certification almost like a driving licence but around sustainability, so people can take this course and earn this sort of similar to, you know, the Albert Certification. But this in terms of like schools can do it and businesses can do it to say that, you know, my students or my employees are all certified in, you know, sustainable awareness. So that’s the sort of plan. But within that project… that’s what got me really interested in sustainability and accessibility because I was working with engineers on these apps in terms of like, “Okay, how can we make these accessible?” And then that made me think about, like, okay, actually, I’m talking about like apps, but like also other things like just basic information. It’s like making sure that it’s accessible. And that’s really where the whole idea of combining accessibility and sustainability came together. So it was really thanks to the Greensand project, which I’m very thankful for. Also, I should say that we have a book coming out at the end of the year which is going to… It basically includes a lot of the case studies that we did because there was a very big project, and it was very ambitious. So it talks about things that we did in terms of creating the apps, making them accessible, as well as things like, you know, current sustainability education across Europe. So yeah, if anyone’s interested, I would recommend it. It’s going to be published by Rutledge.
Mariana: What is the title of the book, Sarah?
Sarah: It is European Green Deal in… Oh gosh, I forgot. European Green Deal in Education. There we go. European Green Deal in Education. I should know, I edited it, but yeah. European Green Deal in Education.
Mariana: It happens, doesn’t it? When you worked so long for something sometimes and you’re like, “what? What was the title of that?” [laughing]
Sarah: I know. It’s like you immediately forget it. [laughing]
Mariana: And just a note for listeners. Because we record episodes much earlier than they are released, the release then is December 2024. So probably, if I understood correctly, so probably by the time people are listening to this episode, it’s already out there for purchase.
Sarah: Yay, that’s good. I’m glad. [laughing]
Mariana: And the next thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is you’ve worked on media accessibility in two very different geographical contexts. So, you made a shift from the context of Northern Ireland to Spain. And I was wondering, did you find any differences or similarities between the media accessibility in these two regions?
Sarah: Yeah, I think I I probably did see, in terms of like my background, I suppose, yeah, I did see differences. So, I think from, I mean, Northern Ireland and Spain, they’ve made like significant strides in accessibility and media accessibility. But I think there are differences, at least in my experience. So, for me in Northern Ireland, accessibility was often viewed in terms of, like, a social justice lens, and particularly in terms of the work that I did on the Prison’s Memory Archive, I think the legacy of the conflict really has led to a lot of inclusive practices that really address the needs of marginalised communities, and that includes people with disabilities. So, that really resulted in sort of emphasis on really community-based initiatives and Grassroot initiatives. Whereas I think in Spain, at least I think it’s because of my contact, because of where I am now, it’s much more research-focused. I think accessibility is framed more in terms of legal compliance. So you know, the country does have disability, you know, rights legislation. And there’s obviously the growing awareness here of, you know, the benefits of accessibility, but I think I think challenges remain in terms of like enforcement and implementation. So, I think yeah, particularly for things like, you know, even basic things like older buildings or venues that, you know, need to be improved to improve accessibility for people, and infrastructure as well. That’s said, though, you know, there are a lot of commonalities between the two places because, you know, they both… there is a real emphasis on accessibility, particularly around like, social participation and human rights. One similarity, I suppose, as well, for me, is the increasing use of technology to improve accessibility so, you know, there are now more and more, you know, solutions to make accessible apps, audio descriptions, you know, sign language, interpreting, et cetera. But yeah, I think, also in terms of Northern Ireland, there probably were a few setbacks in recent years because of the political instability and because there was no, you know, a functioning executive for years and the funding cuts as well in terms of austerity really impacted accessibility initiatives there. So, I mean, I need to go back and see how it is now, but those are my impressions of the two places.
Mariana: Yeah. And it’s interesting sometimes when there’s cuts, access services, accessibility services do tend to to take a hit down.
Sarah: Oh, for sure. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Mariana: The next question is, well, what’s next for you? Are you working on anything new and exciting that you can us about?
Sarah: Yes, I am. [laughing]
Mariana: That’s good. [laughing]
Sarah: So, I’m actually working on two new projects. So these are actually all on AI, so the new topic… so artificial intelligence… so one of them is called the Alfie Project. So, I have to tell you the acronym, so it’s Assessment of Learning Technologies and Frameworks for Intelligent and Ethical AI. So, basically, this project, it’s a 3-year project. And it’s interested in ethical AI, so looking at bias in AI and making explainable AI. So it’s also about accessibility in terms of using AI and checking for biases because, you know, that’s a real problem in terms of AI now. I mean, we’ve just started, so I can’t really report on any findings yet, but that is one of the projects that I’m working on, and I’m really looking forward to it now. It’s very ambitious, so you have to check back in with me in like 2 years’ time to see the results. But another one that I’m working on, which is probably more in line with like my background, is MOSAIC. So this is… I’ll also give you the acronym: A Multilingual, Multimodal, Centralised AI-based Hub for the European Media Content Market. So basically, this is… we’ll be working with a lot of broadcasters. So a lot of broadcasters have a lot of, you know, media content that they want to make more searchable and accessible. So, for instance, if I wanted to find, you know, archival material from Italy, let’s say in the 1990s about, I don’t know, about, you know, the disability rights in Italy in the 1990s, for example, I could search that in this central repository. That is the sort of goal of Mosaic. It’s to create more accessible content from across European broadcasters and use AI in that. So making sure that things are searchable as well as, you know, accessible with, you know, subtitles, audio description, etcetera. So again, that has only just started, so I don’t know the results yet, but I’m very excited.
Mariana: Oh, that’s good. You’re always so busy and so full of energy. So it’s always really, really great to hear about your work. And I guess my final question, this is a question I like asking everyone, is what are your hopes for the future of accessibility? Sarah: My hope is more collaboration. So, more collaboration with people from different parts of the creative industries. Because for me, in my experience, you really can come up with really incredible and interesting things when you work with different people from different backgrounds, whether it be, you know, working with the creative team also end users, working all together. Now, you might not agree on everything, but that’s fine. I just think, like, I think having those collaborations really challenges you to think differently about things. So, like, definitely for me, it’s like the work that I do with the PMA completely challenged me in terms of my own thinking about the past and audio description as well. And it’s also… it’s different applications, right? And how I can use it differently and more creatively, I suppose, as well. So yeah, I would love more collaboration across the creative sector.
Mariana: Oh, I think that’s a wonderful hope. I completely agree with you that loads of really wonderful things and creative things can come from those interactions. And, you know, what always fascinates me about all the work that you do, Sarah, is that I always get the sense that it’s really grounded on the kind of ethical principles occurring for people and the environment and how the best ways of communicating heritage to different people with different backgrounds. So, I just want to thank you as well for bringing such passion and caring to your work and to this podcast.
Sarah: Thank you so much.
Mariana: And thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been really lovely to have you.
Sarah: No, thank you. It’s been a delight. It’s been so lovely. Thanks so much for thinking of me for this podcast. I’m delighted to be part of it.
Mariana: We have reached the end of this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will be back next month with another exciting guest and more about disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries.
