Anna Matamala (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Universidade de Vigo/GALMA
University of Trieste
University of Hildesheim
Erasmus + (European Commission)
EASIT (Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training) brings together professionals and researchers from five European countries looking to create synergies on the basis of three previous projects: ACT defined the profile of the accessibility expert for the scenic arts and created a MOOC to train this new professional profile; ADLAB PRO is researching the profile of the audio describer and generating training materials; ILSA is investigating the new profile of the interlingual live subtitler and will develop the first training course on the topic. A key insight from these projects was that even when sensory barriers are removed, users with multiple needs may still struggle to read subtitles or understand an audio description. In turn, media accessibility measures based on the principles of easy reading can improve the experience of all users, not just those with multiple needs.
Easy to read and easy to understand content has mainly been available in printed media so far. The objective of EASIT therefore is to apply these concepts to the field of media accessibility, in particular subtitling and audio description. To this end, the project has five specific aims:
- Compare easy to read guidelines and training programmes across Europe to identify core shared and language-independent aspects which can form the basis of common European training contents.
- Define the necessary skills of an easy reading expert and explore how they can complement the skills of media accessibility professionals.
- Create a curriculum for training easy reading experts and expanding existing training of accessibility experts.
- Design flexible, multi-language OER (Open Educational Resources) that can be used in a range of learning environments.
Evaluate the new training materials both with prospective trainers and prospective trainees.
Thanks to its international team, the EASIT project will also be able to cater for some of the less spoken European languages, such as Swedish, Catalan and Slovene.