Publication
Title
Accessible Dance Spaces: Intersensory Translation Strategies in Traditional and Integrated Audio Description
Author
Abstract
The growth of Audio Description (AD) has gained momentum in the past few years, spurred on by a massive regulatory and standardization process, combined with growing research and training interests. At the same time, a strand of scholarship within Media Accessibility is turning a critical view to AD, questioning underlying assumptions of access and disability. This has led to new approaches that rethink the dominant standards of Media Accessibility, such as Integrated Access (Fryer/Cavallo 2022), Creative Media Accessibility (Romero Fresco 2021) and participatory Media Accessibility (Di Giovani 2018), to name but a few. These approaches have in common their transformative power, interrogating the nature of standard access provision and emphasizing the collaborative nature that seems to be at the heart of many of these initiatives. Against this background, the present article explores the labour of the dance describer, a domain that has received little academic attention so far. The discussion in this paper contrasts two distinct case studies: the standard AD of the Goldberg Variations, by the Belgian dance group Platform-K and the integrated AD created for the performance Gravity, created by the European collective Un-label. By analysing both case studies through the concept of Achievement Spaces (Neves 2020), we make visible how different levels of collaboration lead to different accessible dance spaces and we identify the textual traces of participation, inclusion, creativity and universalism. The analysis illustrates the impact different types of direct and indirect collaboration can have on access creation. The article also argues that the differences between the approaches cannot be reduced to a difference in AD style or translation approach, but also reveal how different views on disability and access translate into different types of accessible dance.
Language
English
Source (journal)
I-LanD Journal – Identity, Language and Diversity
Publication
2023
Note
Special issue Collaborative Media Accessibility: Actors on the Collaborative Stage
Medium
E-only publicatie
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Record
Identifier
Creation 30.03.2024
Last edited 03.04.2024
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