Pablo Romero Fresco, Nathalie Sfakianos – Inclusion and Accessibility #FredAtSchool

July 13, 2015

Pablo Romero Fresco, Nathalie Sfakianos - Inclusion and Accessibility #FredAtSchool fredfilmradio

Podcast | Download

Pablo Romero Fresco – senior lecturer in audiovisual translation – University of Roehampton / Nathalie Sfakianos – volunteer – Action on Hearing Loss

This is an extract from the first FRED at School conference which took place on the 2nd of July 2015 at the Regent Street Cinema in London, UK.

This extract is a short discussion on the subject of inclusion and accessibility, particularly for the hearing impaired, within the audiovisual sector, featuring expert in the field Pablo Romero Fresco of the University of Roehampton, and Nathalie Sfakianos, volunteer at Action on Hearing Loss.

Action on Hearing Loss is an organisation founded in 1911 in the UK to influence public policy and practice to help those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and one of its most successful campaigns was the free provisions of hearing aids.

Nathalie also suffers from moderate hearing problems and has to resort to the use of a hearing aid, therefore she was able to make some insightful and first hand observation on the current state of audiovisual subtitling and on offer some suggestions to make FRED at School more inclusive and attend the needs of students with hearing impairments (the films of the first edition were already subtitled to attend such needs.) She also talks about prejudice of the hearing audience towards subtitling in general.

Pablo Romero Fresco, as mentioned earlier is an expert in the field of audiovisual accessibility and senior lecturer in audiovisual translation at the University of Roehampton, and during his intervention he highlights a fundamental problem in the matter. That of creating a bridge between the subtitling and the people involved in the making of the films themselves. He also makes the observation that this is a fundamental matter that needs to be addressed given the fact that a research conducted showed that 1 in 7 people in the UK suffered from some type of hearing loss problem.

Written by: fredfilmradio

audiovisual film accessibility FRED at School hard of hearing hearing impaired Inclusion