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- How Accessible Is Portuguese Tourism? – Reflections on Existing Good PracticesPublication . Martins, CláudiaInternational legislation has regarded culture as a human right since the endorsement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a right of which no one should be deprived regardless of their personal traits. In the last decades, cultural heritage has awakened to new needs and demands: not only has it become a focus of interest for the tourism sector, but it has also been targeted for accessibility reasons. The United Nations (s.d., online) hold that accessible tourism (or tourism for all) is of the utmost importance, not only because it “is a central element for responsible and sustainable development policy”, but also since it provides a unique business opportunity – it is estimated that there are 1 billion people with disabilities, not to mention the 2 billion people that are family or caregivers of these persons. As such, accessible tourist offer should be directed to a broad and diverse group that aims at people with impairments, children, seniors, pregnant women, people with obesity, to name just a few.For a number of reasons – commercial, cultural and legal – tourism must be gradually developed from the perspective of accessibility. Chazaud (1997) argued about the need to develop an interface between cultural spaces and visitors, where a number of services are included, from peripheral to more central ones. Similarly, Devile, Jesus & Cruz (2011) support the idea that a tourism product encompasses a set of tangible and intangible components, understood as a whole experience that comprises transport, accommodation, accessible activities, appropriate reception and information, human resources, among others. This approach put forth by these authors entail what we understand as tourism ecosystems. I intend to present examples of good practices that may enhance accessible tourism in Portugal – two museums regarded as exemplary (i.e. Museum of the Council Community of Batalha and the National Museum of Tile), the AccessTUR project for the central region of Portugal, the programme Accessible Beach – Beach for ALL and the project “Culture for All Bragança” (European Social Fund NORTE-07-4230-FSE-000058). I wish to critically discuss them by putting forward the objectives, implementation context and resources created to promote inclusion for all as far as tourism is concerned.
- Audio description as an accessibility enhancerPublication . Martins, CláudiaAudio description for the blind and visually-impaired has been around since people have described what is seen. Throughout time, it has evolved and developed in different contexts, starting with daily life, moving into the cinema and television, then across other performing arts, museums and galleries, historical sites and public places. Audio description is above all an issue of accessibility and of providing visually-impaired people with the same rights to have access to culture, education and ultimately social life. It has to do with making them feel part of society
- Museum audio guides as an accessibility enhancerPublication . Martins, CláudiaAccessibility to museums is enhanced by various types of cultural mediation, such as the use of audio guides, which consist of a means for innovative mediation put forth to make the museum visit more autonomous and simultaneously replace the traditional guided visit. Their use is integrated in the tendency for museum democratisation felt in Europe between the 60s and the 80s of the 20th century, especially with the development of educational services at museums and their opening to schools. It is also an invaluable solution for foreign visitors and particularly people with special needs, such as the blind and visually impaired, the deaf and hard-of-hearing or the intellectual disabled. This talk intends to analyse examples of audio guides on offer in Portuguese museums, so as to ascertain the current practices and whether they perform their role as an accessibility tool.
- Are audiodescribed visits for all?: notes on an accessibility project for contemporary artPublication . Martins, CláudiaTranslators have been given many names, from a “mere” intermediary between a source language/ culture and a target language/ culture to a universal access mediator (Neves, 2020). Mediation “between humans and the cultural heritage environment” (Deane-Cox, 2020) has grown exponentially in the last decades. Within Heritage Studies we speak of interpretation, which ultimate goal is to educate and engage, whereas, in Audiovisual Translation, we endorse the overthrow of obstacles that impede understanding, by enhancing access at various levels – from physical to communicational, from emotional to sensory (cf. Dodd & Sandell, 1998 & Sassaki, 2005). Therefore, this enhanced access aims also to inform in a customised manner, by means of a museum guide for the general public, for children, for the blind and visually-impaired, for the D/deaf and hard-of-hearing, among other audiences. Access in heritage seeks to enable visitors’ engagement and the use of their various senses, in order to create a meaningful and holistic experience that will remain in their memory. Regardless of the type of guide on offer, research has shown that access for all does not necessarily equal one different product/ equipment for each different group, but rather one that amasses the most diversified options in order to cater for as many people as possible. Thus, we aim to report on the project carried out at the Contemporary Art Centre Graça Morais, in Bragança, Portugal, where audiodescribed visits were created for the biannual temporary exhibitions with a view to heeding the needs of blind and visually-impaired patrons.
- Audiovisual translation and the Holocaust: how subtitling can enhance knowledge of the pastPublication . Martins, Cláudia; Xavier, CatarinaThe pivotal position of audiovisual media in the present-day world is undeniable. These media are, as of the last few decades, the most important conduits of information and knowledge. This “audiovisual literacy” (cf. Zabalbeascoa, 2010) arose at a time when consumers spend more time in front of screens than any other vehicle of information. It is against this backdrop that audiovisual translation (AVT) has been recognised for its role as the main facilitator of interlinguistic and intercultural transfers. This has been the case for the project “Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future: Research-Based Digital Learning from Testimonies of Survivors and Rescuers of the Holocaust” [ID 740639658] that was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, where AVT scholars played a signi cant role in helping create 6 digital resources in Portuguese for the IWitness platform (USC Shoah Foundation). Without interlingual and intersemiotic translation, the video testimonies gathered from the Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, and selected for this project, would have been walled in the language and culture to which they belong, despite their common historical circumstances, i.e., the II WW genocide. Our option was then to provide interlingual subtitling, as Portugal is, for the most part, a subtitling country, to which we added information on paralinguistic features, such as intonation, background noises or music, thus considering various audiences. In doing so, we consciously engaged in an accessibility approach, by including features typical of subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. With this paper, we aim to present and describe our subtitling corpus created within this project that consists of 40 videos and over 1200 subtitles, according to a set of criteria. Moreover, we will seek to discuss the problems we encountered in this project and the solutions we came up with, and ultimately reflect on the part subtitling played in enhancing the knowledge of the past.
- Plain language in history museums: a project with wall informationPublication . Martins, Cláudia; Freitas, Ingrid Souza; Almeida, Sarah; Roberto, Maria TeresaThe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has become a watershed for human rights. It enshrines “full and equal enjoyment” for all people with disabilities, namely participation in cultural life (cf. art. 30) which requires the development of accessibility services that may cater for the needs and requirements of specific groups. Among these services, we highlight easy/ plain language as a means to include people with cognitive impairments, or anyone “with communication impairments” (Hansen-Schirra & Maaß, 2020), by both improving “readability and comprehensibility” (ibidem). This is particularly important in cultural venues, e.g. museums, since it can be used by a myriad of visitors, such as children, the elderly, people with lower literacy or simply with less experience going to museums, and people with hearing impairment. However, such strategies may be regarded with suspicion for challenging long-held suppositions that need to be deconstructed by these institutions. Bearing this in mind, we wish to report on a project conducted in a Portuguese museum in Bragança (northeast of Portugal), which goes by the name of Abbott of Baçal Museum. For this history museum, we were asked to adapt 16 texts that would stand as wall information in each of the museum rooms, i.e. adapt them into easy/ plain language. Therefore, our paper aims not only at conducting a contrastive analysis between the original text handed in by the institution and the outcome of the “simplification” process, but also at reflecting on the intralingual translation strategies used to reach quality texts.
- Accessibility as far as the eye can see: an accessible film festivalPublication . Martins, Cláudia; Ferreira, Cláudia Maria PintoCurrently, we can no longer speak of monolingual societies but rather of a linguistic heterogeneity that cuts across every sector of society. In line with this, numerous international and national laws have been signed; however, few have come into actual effect, as it happens in Portugal. If, on the one hand, we all agree on the need for linguistic mediation for language minorities, e.g. people with sensory impairments, on the other, only scattered measures, initiatives or events can be pinpointed as far as cultural events are concerned, namely in the film industry. Accessible festivals showcase not only films made by people with disabilities, but also festivals that include such modalities as audiodescription, subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and/or sign language interpreting. Historically speaking, the first film festival to make use of audiodescription is said to be Cannes Festival in 1989 (Benecke, 2011). Others followed suit, but it has been a slow though steady progress to reach the stage where disability has become the focus of some festivals, for instance, in Brazil, San Francisco, USA, or Lyon, France. Therefore, our aim with this paper is two-fold: we seek to review the major national and international film festivals dedicated to disability and/or that provide accessibility so as to understand the array of choices they offer, and report on our accessible cinema festival, a joint organization of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança and the Avanca Film Club.