Accessible Filmmaking

Book excerpt: Translation, accessibility and the viewing experience of foreign, deaf and blind audiences has long been a neglected area of research within film studies. The same applies to the film industry, where current distribution strategies and exhibition platforms severely underestimate the audience that exists for foreign and accessible cinema. Translated and accessible versions are usually produced with limited time, for little remuneration, and traditionally involving zero contact with the creative team. Against this background, this book presents accessible filmmaking as an alternative approach, integrating translation and accessibility into the filmmaking process through collaboration between translators and filmmakers. The book introduces a wide notion of media accessibility and the concepts of the global version, the dubbing effect and subtitling blindness. It presents scientific evidence showing how translation and accessibility can impact the nature and reception of a film by foreign and sensory-impaired audiences, often changing the film in a way that filmmakers are not always aware of. The book includes clips from the award-winning film Notes on Blindness on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal, testimonies from filmmakers who have adopted this approach, and a presentation of the accessible filmmaking workflow and a new professional figure: the director of accessibility and translation. This is an essential resource for advanced students and scholars working in film, audiovisual translation and media accessibility, as well as for those (accessible) filmmakers who are not only concerned about their original viewers, but also about those of the foreign and accessible versions of their films, who are often left behind.