205 
 

The nature of accessibility studies 

 Gian Maria Greco 
TransMedia Catalonia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 
Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility, Universidade de Vigo 

 

_________________________________________________________ 
Abstract 

 
Accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage, 

 gradually pervading different aspects of our lives as well as a vast range 
of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods 
and models, and becoming an ever more key issue within a proces
that is reshaping the very fabric of society. The ubiquitous effect
of accessibility have led to the emergence of a new research field
namely accessibility studies (AS). This paper presents both the path tha
has led towards the emergence of AS as well as the distinctive feature
of this new field. AS is defined as the field concerned with th
investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena, and the design
implementation and evaluation of accessibility-based and accessibility
oriented methodologies. The analysis is carried out mainly, though no
exclusively, in reference to media accessibility (MA), as it is one of th
most mature areas in which the process of the formation of AS has bee
taking place. It concludes by arguing that AS is a timely field tha
addresses the most pressing issues our society is facing nowadays an
appealing to MA to embrace its identity as an area of AS. 

s 
s 
, 
t 
s 
e 
, 
-
t 
e 
n 
t 
d 

 
Key words: access, accessibility, accessibility revolution, accessibility 

studies, accessible filmmaking, affordances, audiovisual 
translation, design, human-computer interaction, human 
rights, information revolution, interdisciplinarity, Isotype, 
media accessibility, maker-user gap, Marie Neurath, Otto 
Neurath, universal access, universal access in human-
computer interaction  

                                                      
 gianmaria.greco@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349 

Citation: Greco, G.M. (2018). The nature 
of accessibility studies. Journal of
Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), 205-232. 

Editor(s): A. Jankowska & P. Romero-
Fresco 

Received: January 22, 2018 

Accepted: June 30, 2018 

Published: November 15, 2018 

Funding: This project has received
funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under the Marie
Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement
No 752659 (project UMAQ). 

Copyright: ©2018 Greco. This is an open 
access article distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License. This allows for
unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided
the original author and source are
credited. 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8714-6349
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


Journal of Audiovisual Translation, volume 1, issue 1 
 
 

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Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.  
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.  
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, 
“but by the line of the arch that they form.”  
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting.  
Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones?  
It is only the arch that matters to me.”  
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”  

(Calvino, 1974, p. 82) 

 

1. Introduction 

Accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage. Over the course of a movement 
born almost a century ago, accessibility has been gradually pervading different aspects of our lives 
as well as a vast range of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods and models, 
and becoming an ever more key issue within a process that is reshaping the very fabric of society. 
The ubiquitous effects of accessibility have, of late, led some scholars to argue for the emergence 
of a new research field, namely accessibility studies (AS) (e.g. Greco, 2016b, 2017; Jankowska, 
forthcoming; Romero-Fresco, 2017b, forthcoming). Yet, a presentation of both the path behind 
the emergence of AS and its distinctive features is still missing. In this paper, the first steps towards 
bridging this gap will be taken; the footpath of the analysis of a new field tread by many others before 
will be embarked upon. Since one is as good as the company she keeps, in the following pages there 
will be a careful attempt to retrace the steps of those successful explorers, while being vigilant 
to the turns and obstacles presently laid out by accessibility. However, in doing so, I will dissatisfy 
Calvino’s Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, for I will neither describe each single stone that makes the 
bridge of AS nor detail the line of arch that supports it. The line of arch as well as each single stone 
deserve a space longer than the one I have at my disposal. Therefore, my goal is to sketch a general 
overview of the field of AS, which makes the character of this paper propaedeutic; that is, 
I aim to present an initial analysis of the distinctiveness of AS and prepare it for future systematic 
studies. 
 
More specifically, in the following pages I will start out by introducing the theoretical and social 
revolution sparked by accessibility through its connections with two other revolutions: 
that produced by human rights and that by information and communication technologies 
(ICTs). I will then present three shifts common to the fields where accessibility has come to play a key 
role, namely, the shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of accessibility, the shift 
from a maker-centred to a user-centred approach, and the shift from reactive to proactive 
approaches. Next, I will analyse the role that internal and external forces – interdisciplinarity, 
the formation of a new research community, and the opposition from well-established fields – 



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have been playing in the formation of AS. I will go on to introduce and briefly discuss a definition 
of AS and trace its origins to the work of Otto and Marie Neurath, to then conclude by outlining what 
lies ahead of AS. Though the emergence of AS involves a vast number of research areas, whenever 
possible, examples from the areas of audiovisual translation (AVT) and media accessibility (MA) 
will be used, given the scope of this journal and also, so as not to make the paper anecdotal.  

2. The roots of the accessibility revolution 

The first cry of accessibility in contemporary thought and society can be traced back to the same 
intense debate as that on human dignity, equality, autonomy, and participation that took 
place in the first decades of the last century, between the end of WWI and that of WWII. During this 
time, the idea that human beings needed some material and immaterial goods to live a decent life 
became the centre of a widespread movement that, among its many effects, led to the adoption 
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Human rights rest upon two intertwined 
grounds: human dignity and access. The importance of the former is evident in the fact that it is 
the very first concept introduced in the preamble of the UDHR. This concept of human dignity sets 
a minimum standard of quality of life an individual is entitled to for the sole reason of being a human 
being. In turn, such a standard is defined by a series of material and immaterial goods (i.e. the objects 
of human rights) thought to be essential for every human being in order to fulfil her humanity. 
Without food, work, education, or cultural life, an individual is deprived of her dignity qua human 
being. Yet, guaranteeing the mere existence of those goods does not suffice in assuring a dignified 
life. The fact that a state doesn’t deplete and pollute water resources is not sufficient grounds for it 
to claim that it is respecting the right to water. In order to claim so, it must also provide the necessary 
means for everyone to access those water resources (Singh, 2016). Setting up a public education 
system does not suffice for a state to claim that it is respecting the right to education, if said system 
does not also provide the means to access for every student. Guaranteeing the conditions 
for the existence of fundamental material and immaterial goods is a necessary but not sufficient 
condition for human dignity; the possibility to have actual access to them also needs to be in place 
(Francioni, 2007). In turn, the requirement of access entails that “everyone has an adequate quantity 
and quality of that object [of a human right], given their particular natural and social circumstances” 
(Buitenweg, 2007, p. 269; see also Scanlon, Cassar, & Nemes, 2004). Controlling access to such goods 
has been one of the main and most effective instruments used by power structures: social control 
through the decision over who gets access to what, how, and when (Foucault, 2007; Morris, 2012). 
In the UDHR only two rights are explicitly formulated in terms of access. Since then, 
the use of the formula “the right to access to x” instead of “the right to x” has been steadily increasing 
in international texts and human rights treaties. The key role played by accessibility has been made 
further explicit by the United Nations in a series of documents published over the years, 
most famously, the General Comment on the Right to Adequate Food (art. 11 of the UDHR) adopted 
in 1999 by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A General Comment provides 
an authoritative interpretation of an article related to a human rights treaty as well as some precise 



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measures to be taken in order to comply with the obligations under that specific article; 
that is, it provides concrete meaning to the right expressed in the article. The General Comment 
on the Right to Adequate Food makes explicit that human rights impose four distinct kinds of 
obligations, three of which are based on accessibility, namely: “duties to respect human rights, 
duties to protect (secure access to the objects of) human rights, duties to provide (secure access to) 
the objects of human rights, and duties to facilitate human rights fulfilment” (Pogge, 2011, p. 8)I, 
as well as an obligation to facilitate, which means that “the State must pro-actively engage in 
activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of” the objects of human rights 
(UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999, p. 5)II. Consequently, access does not 
merely mean for an individual to have a good at her disposal or to have the possibility to reach it. 
Having access also means being able to use, interact with, and enjoy that good. Thanks to the cultural 
revolution produced by human rights, it has become clear that access is a necessary requirement 
for the respect of the human dignity of all. From this point of view, accessibility then becomes 
a proactive principle for human rights, which calls for an equally proactive attitude from the duty-
bearers to comply with that necessary requirement (Greco, 2016b). As we will see later, 
this has made accessibility a key instrument in many international policies, not only those concerning 
exclusively human rights. 
 
In order for the accessibility revolution to fully blossom into what it is today, a second condition was 
needed; this time related to the nature of our world and the ways we access it. In short, it needed 
the information revolution. Over the past few decades, ICTs have been changing the very nature 
of the world we live in. They are not “mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting 
our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception 
of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency)” (Floridi, 2015, p. 2). 
They are modifying the very mechanisms through which we access the world, ourselves, and others. 
A 2004 preparatory document for the UNESCO World Summit on the Information Society, entitled 
Social Transformation in an Information Society: Rethinking Access to You and the World, highlights 
how access is at the centre of one of the most disruptive effects of the information society. 
More precisely, it discusses the “reconfiguration of access enabled by these new digital choices”, 
which is challenging “fundamental social and political notions of freedom, control, personal 
responsibility, and shared community values” (Dutton, 2004, p. 70). The document shows how, 
by reconfiguring access, ICTs are creating “more than just new connections. [They enable] 
the opening and closing of new forms of personal, social, and economic capacities, relationships, 
and power-plays” (Dutton, 2004, p. 19). They are creating new social inequalities through 
the formation of multiple divides, beyond the traditional framing of a digital divide between those 
who have physical access to ICTs and those who have not. A similar warning was recently made by the 
Internet Society in a report that summarises the results of a worldwide survey “to better understand 
the forces of change” (Internet Society, 2017, p. 7) in the coming years. According to the report: 
“existing inequities between the “haves” and the “have nots” could be exacerbated as technology 
changes move faster and faster” (Internet Society, 2017, p. 79). In the information age, accessibility 
becomes the ground on which power negotiations and social struggles take place. Consider the issue 



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of languages on the web, which “serves as a counter to the perceived concentration of issues 
surrounding the information society on ICTs and their impact” (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2005, 
p. 7), and more specifically the under-representation of minority languages and the effects 
on the related cultures and communities. More than mere access to ICTs, a crucial divide here is 
the one between “languages that are ‘information rich’ and languages that are ‘information poor’ 
with regard to online content and services” (Cunliffe & Herring, 2005, pp. 131-132). 
 
Rooted in the human rights revolution and boosted by the information revolution, accessibility 
has been leading a movement of its own. The accessibility revolution has been pervading and 
radically changing the very foundation of our society, bringing access to the fore as a crucial issue 
in our age, making it “the age of access” (Rifkin, 2001). The revolutionary effects of accessibility 
are visible in the most divergent aspects of society, meaning that they have also been producing 
a paradigm shift in various research fields, giving way to novel research methods, and to new models. 
Clear evidence can be identified in a wide range of fields, from transportation studies to human-
computer interaction, from geography to engineering, from design to sustainability studies, 
from translation studies to cultural heritage, from education to tourism studies, just to name a few 
(e.g., Buhalis & Darcy, 2011; Janelle & Hodge, 2000; Levine, Grengs, & Merlin, forthcoming 2019; 
Litman, 2017; Prodan, 2017; Pullin, 2009; Stephanidis & Emiliani, 1999). An enumeration and analysis 
of every case would require a space much longer than the one at my disposal. Briefly mentioning 
two cases, upon first glance quite distant from AVT and MA, may help outline the revolutionary 
changes being produced by accessibility. In the area of digital sustainability, accessibility has been 
playing a key role for quite a long time. Just consider that in both the first and the second edition 
of the UNESCO General Guidelines to Safeguard Documentary Heritage, the central term 
of preservation is defined in relation to accessibility, respectively as that which “encompasses all 
actions required to make documentary heritage accessible for as long as it is required” (Foster, Lyall, 
Marshall, & Russel, 1995, p. 76) and “the sum total of the steps necessary to ensure the permanent 
accessibility of documentary heritage” (Edmondson, 2002, p. 61).Over the last two decades, 
accessibility has become increasingly more relevant in the field. Acknowledging that the ability 
to “provide access to digital information is linked to more than technical issues” (Bradley, 2007, 
p. 156) and that it also includes other factors, such as economic and social ones, researchers 
have started to develop an entirely new approach to investigate issues of digital sustainability based 
on accessibility. In turn, this has produced foundational ramifications for the whole field 
of sustainability studies: since “access concerns can be considered a prerequisite for sustainability”, 
then accessibility is “a necessary step towards conceptualizing the sustainability of human societies 
and their development” (Prodan, 2017, pp. 67-69). The transformative effects of accessibility 
are even more pronounced in the case of transportation studies. Accessibility has played an essential 
role in the field since at least the late 1950s. Over the years, it has grown and become one of its main 
concepts, to the point that, in the last decade, accessibility has radically altered the very core 
of transportation studies itself. Under the acknowledgement that people rely on transportation 
“to travel to work but also to get to school, obtain medical care, attend religious services, 
shop for basic necessities” (Sanchez & Brenman, 2007, pp. 1-2), transportation becomes vital 



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for human flourishing and human dignity, and as such many scholars have been rethinking the very 
foundations of the field through the lens of accessibility. They have been highlighting 
how “[accessibility] changes how we think about and measure transport problems and the scope 
of solutions that are considered for addressing them. As with the Copernican revolution, this shift 
changes what we consider the system’s centre: traffic-based planning places motor vehicles 
at the centre, while accessibility-based planning places people at the centre of the transport system” 
(Litman, 2017, p. 4). Thanks to accessibility, “transportation planning is experiencing a paradigm shift 
(a fundamental change in how problems are defined and solutions evaluated). This involves a change 
from traffic-based analysis (…) to mobility-oriented analysis (…) to accessibility-based analysis” 
(Litman, 2017, p. 4). This foundational shift towards accessibility is having major consequences 
at a number of different levels. It affects not only scholars, who have launched 
interdisciplinary research programmes aimed at establishing accessibility, but also major 
international actors, such as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). In his foreword 
of the advocacy paper on Accessibility. A Changing Paradigm towards “Mobility for All”, the president 
of the organisation, recognising that “the global commitment to sustainable development goals 
and their targets mandates us to enable transportation systems that are safe, environmentally 
sustainable and accessible for everyone”, states FIA’s role “to support and advocate for inclusive 
policies that make accessibility a systematic concern in the planning and implementation of transport 
systems around the world” (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, n.d.)III. 
 
A similar revolutionary effect has led accessibility to become a strategic instrument in the agenda 
of many international actors for the achievement of some of the most pressing social priorities. 
This is apparent in numerous policies by international bodies, such as the United Nations, the World 
Health Organisation, the World Bank, and the OECD. A brief look at some European policies 
will illustrate this point. A first example is that of the European Commission, in that accessibility 
is at the core of one of the eight areas of action of the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 
(European Commission, 2010), as well as a specific mandate in the Strategic Implementation Plan 
on Active and Healthy Ageing (European Commission, 2012), and again, a central issue 
in the New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism (European Commission, 2005). Probably even 
more importantly, it is one of the three pillars of the Digital Single Market Strategy (European 
Commission, 2015), one of the chief programmes of the Commission, and the subject of a specific 
mandate (the so-called European Accessibility Act) under discussion by the European Parliament 
since December 2015. A second case in point is that of the Council of Europe, which, for example, 
puts accessibility at the centre of its policies on governance and trust: e.g. accessibility is a recurring 
theme in at least twelve of the principles and fourteen of the guidelines set up 
in the Recommendation on e-democracy (Council of Europe, 2009) and one of the eight principles 
in the Guidelines for Civil Participation in Political Decision Making (Council of Europe, 2017). 
 
The list of the myriad areas of knowledge and society that have been dramatically altered 
by accessibility could easily go on for pages. As we will see in the next section, these radical changes 
are the results of three distinctive shifts produced by the accessibility revolution. 



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3. The three shifts of accessibility 

A closer look at the pervasive growth of accessibility in our society, especially in terms 
of how accessibility has entered and developed in various research fields, shows that these fields 
have been experiencing a three-fold shift. The first is that of a shift from particularist accounts 
to a universalist account of access, the second is a shift from a maker-centred to a user-centred 
approach, and the third is a shift from reactive to proactive approaches. 
 
The evolution from various particularist accounts to a universalist (or integrated/holistic) 
account of access means that, while access was previously thought to concern exclusively or mainly 
specific groups of people, it is now understood to concern all human beings. Accessibility usually 
entered these fields through an initial focus on a specific group, often, though not always, 
persons with disabilities. Over time, the focus was progressively widened to include other groups 
until finally reaching a universal scope. The field of human-computer interaction is a clear example, 
where, thanks to the dedication of progressive scholars, over the past few decades, 
accessibility has given rise to the area called “universal access in human-computer interaction” 
(UAHCI), sometimes shortened to “universal access” (Stephanidis, 2009b). The origins of UAHCI 
“are to be identified in approaches to accessibility mainly targeted toward providing access 
to computer-based applications by users with disabilities” (Stephanidis, 2009a, p. 1.1). 
Over time, UAHCI expanded its focus to other groups, for instance, the elderly, until finally embracing 
a universal vision by acknowledging that “accessibility can no longer be considered as a specific 
problem of people with disabilities [but of] society at large” (Stephanidis & Emiliani, 1999, p. 22). 
The shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account is even more evident in MA, 
originally formed as an academic area of research within the field of AVT, the latter being 
the “branch of translation studies concerned with the transfer of multimodal and multimedial texts 
into another language and/or culture” (Pérez-González, 2008, p. 13). The transfer of such texts, 
for example, a film, is carried out through what in AVT are usually called modalities, e.g., interlingual 
subtitling. Accessibility fully entered the horizon of AVT thanks to the pioneering work of some 
scholars (e.g. Díaz Cintas, 2005; Gambier, 2003; Orero, 2004), effectively creating the area referred 
to as MA. Initially however, MA was positioned as a field concerning exclusively “subtitling 
for the deaf and the hard of hearing (SDH) and audio description (AD) for the blind and the visually 
impaired” (Orero, 2004, p. VIII)IV. It was at times expanded to include other modalities, 
such as audio subtitling and sign language interpreting, though it was still framed as specific 
for persons with sensory disabilities. Over time, scholars began to shift towards a second account 
of MA based on the idea that MA concerns not only sensory but also linguistic barriers (Díaz Cintas, 
2005; Orero & Matamala, 2007), to then the universalist account according to which MA concerns 
access to media products, services, and environmentsV for all persons who cannot, 
or cannot completely, access them in their original form (Greco, 2016b). Obviously, the shifts 
described in MA should not be seen as linear in time, for versions of the two particularist accounts 
can still be found in recent literature, e.g., “media accessibility, i.e. audio description, 
subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio subtitling” (Orero, 2012, p. 15) 



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and “media accessibility has become a key concept in [AVT], devoted to studying how linguistic and 
sensory barriers can be overcome to make audiovisual products accessible” (Baños, 2017, p. 485). 
As will be discussed in section 4, an analysis of this shift and of the current status of MA also provides 
a clear case of a specific aspect in the dialectics of the emergence of AS, that is, the endogenous force 
exercised by traditional disciplines. 
 
The changing tide towards a universalist account of accessibility has been interlaced with a second 
movement, namely, the increasing attention towards users as bearers of valuable knowledge 
for the investigation of accessibility processes and phenomena as well as their active involvement 
in the design of accessibility solutions and artefactsVI. For years, the dominant attitude was based 
on a radical version of the so-called maker’s knowledge tradition (Greco, Paronitti, Turilli, & Floridi, 
2005; Pérez-Ramos, 1988), according to which maker’s knowledge was the only one that mattered 
(Kraus, 2017). Whether it be policymaking, scholarly research or industrial development, 
or the creation and production of an audiovisual product, an urban plan of a city or some software, 
the main assumption was that makers know best and that users had neither place, 
nor their knowledge any value for the design process (Bruiger, 2017; Fisher, 2016). 
Artefacts were devised according to the maker’s point of view (Pheasant, 1996), or, in the best case 
scenario, according to the makers’ interpretation of users’ needs and capabilities (Norman, 2013), 
with makers giving people “what [they] think they want or need or ought to want” (I. H. Thompson, 
2014, p. 79). Over time, this has produced a complex series of gaps between the different 
stakeholders involved (T. Thompson, 2003), of which the most prominent is the maker-user gap, 
which places makers and users at opposite ends of the spectrum of creation and production. 
The wider the gap between the maker and the user, the less probable it is that an artefact is 
accessible (Ashok & Jacko, 2009), which in turn may strengthen old ghettoisations of users, or create 
new ghettos (Greco, 2016a, 2016b). Accessibility has however, challenged the maker-centred 
and maker-driven approach. In order for artefacts to be fully accessible, the knowledge of users and 
other stakeholders needs to be fully taken into account in the design system because it is 
as important as maker’s knowledge. A major consequence of the new outlook towards users is 
the privileged status that reception studies have reached in the fields affected by accessibility. 
Once more, MA is a good example, as in recent years this area has witnessed a sharp increase 
in reception studies (e.g., Chmiel & Mazur, 2016; Di Giovanni, 2018; Eardley-Weaver, 2014; 
Mangiron, 2016; Perego, Del Missier, & Stragà, 2018; Pöchhacker, 2018; Romero-Fresco, 2015; 
Szarkowska & Jankowska, 2015; Szarkowska, Krejtz, Krejtz, & Duchowski, 2013; Szarkowska, Krejtz, 
Pilipczuk, Dutka, & Kruger, 2016). Actually, the distinctive focus of MA on users has led to the 
flourishing of reception studies in AVT as well (Di Giovanni & Gambier, 2018) that is, in the field where 
MA first originated as an academic area, thus fulfilling Gambier’s forecast that it would have been 
precisely through accessibility that reception studies would come to play a key role in the field of AVT 
(Gambier, 2006). 
 
While the first two shifts have occurred mainly on an epistemological level, the third shift has taken 
place on a methodological one. The very acknowledgment of the need to consider accessibility within 



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the design process, and that users’ knowledge is as important as the maker’s, poses questions as to 
the place of accessibility concerns and of user’s knowledge within the process of artefact creation 
as well as how this knowledge should be acquired and used within that process. The process of design 
of an artefact can be distinguished in a (series of) ex-ante, in itinere, and ex-post stage(s) (Greco 
& Pedone, 2015; Greco, Pedone, Monsellato, Rizzo, & Spinelli, 2012). When access concerns started 
popping up onto designers’ radar, they were mainly addressed by adopting a reactive approach, 
that is, through the devising of ex-post solutions, such as specific adaptations or add-ons carried out 
after the realisation of the artefact (Adams, 2009). Over the years, a vast body of research literature 
has shown the numerous limitations of ex-post solutions, as e.g. they produce a “loss in functionality 
[or] provide limited and low-quality access” (Emiliani, 2009, p. 2.6). The shortcomings of reactive 
approaches have also been apparent to the most diverse actors outside scholarly circles. 
Just consider that in the guide on the enforcement of and compliance with the Americans with 
Disability Act published five years after the adoption of that law, the American Bar Association states 
that “if accessibility is only remembered as an afterthought, or late in the planning/design process, 
it always becomes less effective for the user, more difficult for the designer/contractor, and more 
costly for the owner” (Salmen, 2000, p. 231). In some cases, adopting a reactive approach means 
renouncing accessibility completely, because “it is impossible to 'glue' accessibility onto some 
of the systems as an afterthought or postmanufacture process” (Vanderheiden, 1998, p. 35). 
The main reason for the failure or the very limited success of ex-post solutions is that reactive 
approaches are often based on the paternalistic assumption that “users are victims of poorly 
designed systems and need to be rescued by designers” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, p. 112). 
While in some cases addressing access at the ex-post or in itinere stages is the only possible way, 
the nature of accessibility as a proactive principle for the fulfilment of human rights calls for a radical 
methodological change. It requires a shift from reactive approaches to proactive approaches, 
the latter entailing “a purposeful effort to build access features into a product as early as possible 
(e.g., from its conception to design and release)” (Emiliani, 2009, p. 2.6). Adopting a proactive 
approach does not merely mean moving accessibility concerns from the ex-post to the ex-ante stage 
of design. It also means “placing the users and potential users at the heart of the development 
process rather than leaving them as an afterthought where they are left to put up with whatever has 
been designed on their behalf” (Taylor, Caiafa, & Brown, 2002, p. 257). Indeed, within this shift, 
accessibility has underscored the fact that all stakeholders must be proactively involved in the design 
process, thus calling for an “agency distribution” among the different actors involved (Vardouli, 
2015). This shift obviously demonstrates that there is no accessibility without participation, 
and it highlights yet another case of the complex series of gaps between the stakeholders mentioned 
above, namely the maker-expert-user gap. As such, it is crucial to involve, from the ex-ante stage, 
not only users but also experts. The ex-post solutions and involvement of experts is a well-known 
problem in the area of web accessibility, where “a main factor for the lack of Accessibility at the Web 
is the major knowledge gap that normally exists between developers and Accessibility specialists 
[as well as the] common practice to consider Accessibility at the very last stages of the development 
process, or when applications are already coded” (Martín, Cechich, & Rossi, 2011, p. 7). 
Over the years, this awareness has pushed researchers as well as industry to devise a series 



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of specific methodologies that place accessibility concerns, users and experts at the early stages 
of development of web applications. An even more conspicuous case comes from the audiovisual 
industry, where accessibility has been relegated to the ex-post stage for decades. Subtitling, 
audio description, and dubbing, for example, do not form an integral part of the production process 
of an audiovisual product, as they are often left to be dealt with at the distribution phase, 
with two major consequences. These include the implementation of accessibility solutions that 
are not always efficacious as well as, in some striking cases, a total alteration of the original artistic 
intention of the creators or aesthetic features of the audiovisual product (Romero-Fresco, 2013). 
While this attitude nowadays is still dominant, one of the first signs of a growing awareness towards 
a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach in this context can be found in The Arts and 504: a 504 
Handbook for Accessible Arts Programming. First published by the National Endowment for the Arts 
in 1985, the handbook is addressed to projects and activities requesting funding from the agency, 
and it contains a series of best practices and suggestions for compliance with section 504 
of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The section on captioning of the 1992 version of the handbook 
includes an extra explanatory paragraph, not present in the first edition, which states 
that “captioning film is most effective if taken into account at the earliest stage of production so that 
consideration can be made for technical concerns and length of dialogue” (National Endowment 
for the Arts, 1992, p. 79). It is precisely this awareness that, in recent years in the field of MA, 
has driven the development of an approach called accessible filmmaking (AFM). The focus on moving 
accessibility from the ex-post to the ex-ante stage of film production has led AFM to explicitly address 
and bridge the maker-expert-user gap by introducing the role of the director of accessibility, 
an MA expert involved from the very start of the creation of an audiovisual product (Branson, 2018). 
Finally, over the past few years, the area of AD has proven to be very fertile ground 
for the intersection and the flourishing of the three shifts, producing some of the most innovative 
projects in MA, e.g. from participatory AD in opera events (Di Giovanni, 2018) to enriched descriptive 
guides in museums (Neves, 2016) to integrated AD in theatre performances (Fryer, 2018). 
They all share the same traits: a universalistic account of accessibility, the implementation 
of a proactive approach, and the involvement of the different stakeholders during the various stages 
of the life-cycle of production. Their ability to embrace all the salient features of accessibility 
and to put them into practice with a conscious, socially-engaged attitude can point the way towards 
a more structural and analytical approach of AS to many other areas. 

4. Internal and external forces in the formation of accessibility studies 

Research on knowledge production and organisation usually assumes that, in order for a new field 
to be born, one strong, yet not necessarily well-defined, “unique, or at least central, concern” 
must exist (Pietig, 1984, p. 368), which then sets in motion a dialectic between endogenous 
and exogenous forces that may lead to the formation of the new field (Farjoun, 2002). While scholars 
have been debating the precise list of mechanisms and their features for decades, 



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there is widespread agreement on several of them: (a) interdisciplinarity, (b) the formation 
of a research community, and (c) forms of opposition by well-established fields. 
 
When a new problem enters the knowledge horizon, if it cannot be tackled using exclusively the tools 
of a specific field, a common practice among researchers is to join forces and set up 
a multidisciplinary programme, with each one utilising ideas and methods from her own discipline, 
and then “split apart unchanged when the work is done” (Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary 
Research, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine, 
2005, p. 29). That is, multidisciplinary research is additive, not integrative (Klein, 1990). 
Some issues are so ground-breaking and interwoven with social questions that they 
“demand interdisciplinary participation” and prompt “scientists, engineers, social scientists, 
and humanists to join” forces (Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research et al., 2005, 
p. 17). The mere juxtaposition of different fields is not sufficient to address those issues; rather, 
it is necessary to choose the path of the “integration and synthesis of ideas and methods” 
(Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research et al., 2005, p. 27), a path that often leads to the 
creation of “new hybrid research fields” (Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research et al., 
2005, p. 18). Through a process refined over decades, accessibility issues have proven to demand 
such an interdisciplinary approach, pulling together researchers from the most diverse of fields – 
from engineering to translation, from cultural heritage to architecture, from computing 
to transportation – and pushing them to share their knowledge and tools to devise new methods 
and techniques in order to address the intricate nature of access problems. Game accessibilityVII 
is a fast-growing topic in MA. Initially framed in terms of translation problems requiring 
a multidisciplinary approach, in recent years scholars have convincingly shown that the topic is much 
broader and indeed has an “inherently interdisciplinary nature” (O'Hagan & Mangiron, 2013, p. 37). 
Mangiron’s (2011) call for interdisciplinarity as a strategy for the future growth of research 
on the topic has become reality in just a few short years, for game accessibility is now addressed 
through a series of interdisciplinary approaches that involve a large number of fields. These include 
the ones she identified as well many more, such as: computer engineering, AVT, psychology, 
and healthcare, but also media studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and human-
computer-interaction (O'Hagan & Mangiron, 2013). Even if we narrow our focus to issues specifically 
related to disability and technology, that is, even if a particularist account is assumed, researchers 
are now claiming that this “complex interplay (…) can best be understood by recourse 
to interdisciplinary and international evidence” (Roulstone, 2016, p. 5), which has led 
to the formation of “interdisciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners [who are] embracing 
holistic perspectives on disabled people’s intersection with technology to include psycho-social 
constructs and their connection to technological and social opportunity” (Roulstone, 2016, p. 99). 
 
The attraction of accessibility as a unique idea, together with the need to combine efforts to develop 
interdisciplinary resources, has been pulling researchers out of the sphere of influence of traditional 
fields and bringing them together, in accordance with the formation of the so-called invisible colleges 
(Crane, 1972). They have been creating an informal network, structurally grounded on shared 



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research interests based on a common subject matter, and socially bonded through a communication 
grid on national and international scales (Bakker, 2017; Price, 1963). This process is brilliantly 
summarised by Holmes in his seminal paper, published in 1972, in which he argues in favour 
of translation studies as a new, distinctive field: 
 

As a new problem or set of problems comes into view in the world of learning, 
there is an influx of researches [sic] from adjacent areas, bringing with them the paradigms 
and models that have proved fruitful in their own fields. These paradigms and models 
are then brought to bear on the new problem, with one of two results. In some situations 
the problem proves amenable to explicitation, analysis, explication, and at least partial 
solution within the bounds of one of the paradigms or models, and in that case it is annexed 
as a legitimate branch of an established field of study. In other situations the paradigms 
or models fail to produce sufficient results, and researches [sic] become aware that new 
methods are needed to approach the problem. In this second type of situation, the result 
is a tension between researches [sic] investigating the new problem and colleagues 
in their former fields, and this tension can gradually lead to the establishment of new 
channels of communication and the development of what has been called a new disciplinary 
utopia, that is, a new sense of a shared interest in a common set of problems, approaches, 
and objectives on the part of a new grouping of researches [sic]. (Holmes, 1988, p. 67)VIII. 

 
Over the course of its diffusion across many fields, access issues have been attracting an increasingly 
broader range of researchers, who share both a common interest as well as a willingness to hybridise 
their knowledge and methods in order to address those issues. Over the years, they have acquired 
new skills that do not fully conform to a single, specific area of the current system, as they no longer 
fit within classical disciplinary boundaries. They end up having more in common amongst themselves 
– in Holmes’ words, sharing the same “new disciplinary utopia” – than with colleagues 
from their original fields. The area of MA is a clear case. Though it was bred within the field 
of translation studies, in recent years MA problems have attracted scholars from the most vastly 
divergent fields, thanks in large part to a favourable environment facilitated by many international 
and interdisciplinary research projects. Researchers and practitioners from engineering 
to psychology, from filmmaking to computer science, from tourism studies to the performing arts, 
have been joining forces in order to tackle MA problems, sharing their own disciplinary methods 
and creating new ones along the way. During this process they have been slowly moving beyond 
the boundaries of their original fields, detaching themselves from their colleagues, and forming 
a new community of peers, a division of the invisible college of AS. The peculiarities of MA as an area 
that can be neither merely nor entirely “annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field 
of study” are already leading MA scholars to debate fundamental internal issues, such as the forms 
of training and education that should be devised in order to adequately respond to the novel 
character of the field (Chmiel, Vercauteren, & Mazur, forthcoming). 
 



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While the formation of a new community around accessibility and the joint development 
of interdisciplinary methods have been acting as exogenous forces and bringing together researchers 
towards the common ground of AS, they have been opposed by endogenous forces trying to bar 
that very process. Seeing as “no discipline willingly abdicates its mandated sovereignty” (Klein, 2009, 
p. 271), well-established fields tend to resist the formation of a new field, perceived as a competitor 
or a threat to their fiefdoms, by expressing a cultural stance that some call scholasticism 
(Floridi, 2002). They tend to shield themselves behind the walls of their orthodoxy, so that 
their “response is often only to create new subfields – a seemingly endless proliferation 
that incorporates members of the emerging community of scholars within the larger enterprise 
without any debate about the significance of their challenge” (Salter & Hearn, 1996, p. 154). 
A good example of how scholasticism has been cropping up in the development of AS is once again 
provided by MA and translation studies, where the latter has manifested its “sheer force 
of orthodoxy” (Klein, 2009, p. 271) in at least two main ways. The first one is the attempt to keep 
MA within the disciplinary boundaries of translation studies, while the second one is the apparently 
positive claim that MA may be an autonomous field of its own. 
 
As we have seen in the previous section, MA was born within the field of translation studies, 
specifically as an area of AVT. The initial definition of MA was based on a particularist account 
that considered MA to be exclusively concerned with SDH and AD, with some variants 
extending it to other modalities like audio subtitling and sign language interpreting. 
However, all these alternatives still frame MA in relation to persons with sensory disabilities. 
Over time, scholars began to adopt a second particularist account, which expanded the scope of MA 
to include foreign language speakers in addition to persons with sensory disabilities. While the first 
particularist account frames MA as a sub-area of AVT, the second particularist account 
makes it overlap with AVT itself. Common to both particularist accounts is that they position MA 
within the disciplinary borders of translation studies. In addition, both implement forms of resistance 
by relegating MA problems to the realm of translation problems. Yet, the moment AVT problems 
are positioned in terms of accessibility, we are stepping outside the safe, familiar boundaries 
of translation studies and treading upon broader ground, where translation is just one of the many 
factors at play, and often not the main one (Romero-Fresco, 2018). This being said, endorsing the two 
particularist accounts may lead to some controversial implications. Grounding MA within translation 
means paring down its scope to a narrower set of so-called modalities (or services), 
the ones that are translation based, and excluding from MA others that do not involve 
any translation activity, or perhaps only in a limited way. Even if a restrictive definition of MA was 
taken, that is, to include only translation-based MA services for the group of persons with sensory 
disabilities, this still creates friction with the widespread interpretation of MA services for that 
specific group as adopted by many scholars as well as by industry, service providers, and international 
bodies and organisations (e.g., Armstrong, 2016; Cappello, 2014; Ellis & Goggin, 2015; European 
Telecommunications Standards Institute, 2009; Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility, 
2013; NEM-ACCESS, 2016; SENSE, 2006; Shirley & Kendrick, 2006; Slater, Lindstrom, & Astbrink, 2010; 
Utray, de Castro, Moreno, & Ruiz-Mezcua, 2012; Varney, 2013). Both scholars and organisations 



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identify subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, audio description, sign language interpreting, 
and clean audio as MA services specific for persons with sensory disabilitiesIX. While translation-
based activities do play a key role, albeit it is not always an exclusive one, in the former three services, 
the latter – clean audio – does not involve any form of translation (Jankowska, forthcoming). 
This creates discord between the two versions of MA services, even though both are based on 
the first particularist account that limits MA to persons with sensory disabilities. Even more 
contentious is the implication of the second particularist account, which limits MA to sensory 
and linguistic barriers. A direct consequence is the exclusion from the core interests of MA 
of any person who does not fall within the groups identified by those parameters. It follows 
therefore, that children, the elderly, and persons with cognitive disabilities, for example, as well as 
any service that makes media artefacts accessible to them, are thus excluded from the visible horizon 
of MA. Any effect of (linguistic or sensory) MA services on them can be determined a mere positive 
externality (Brown, 2010-2011) or the result of a spillover effect (Committee on Disability in America 
& Institute of Medicine, 2007), not a planned result. Hence, by framing MA in terms of specific groups, 
or services for specific groups, the universal trait of accessibility is betrayed, inadvertently re-creating 
a ghetto effect (Greco, 2016a, 2016b). Furthermore, a second form of opposition is apparent 
with regards to the notion that MA be regarded as “media accessibility studies”, that is, that we 
should consider MA to be a full-fledged academic field of its own, one that incorporates AVT, hence, 
disregarding the need to talk about AS. Yet, in order to claim that MA is a field of its own, one has to 
accept all the mechanisms that justify the rise of AS presented in the previous two sections while also 
demonstrating that those mechanisms apply exclusively to AVT/MA, and not to any other fields. 
While it does acknowledge that MA has increased the number of shareholders, this claim seems 
to want to maintain the control stock in the hands of translation studies by allocating a dominant 
role to translation practices. 
 
The universal account of MA successfully disentangles itself from the abovementioned controversies 
while also highlighting the benefits of not restricting the focus of MA to any specific group of users 
or list of access services. Rather, it allows for the assumption of functional processes resulting 
from the interaction between users’ specificities and the means to address those specificities 
in terms of accessing either media artefacts or other artefacts through media means. 
By making translation neither the sole nor the main driving force behind MA but simply 
one of the many factors that contribute to address accessibility issues, the universal account of MA 
allows for the inclusion of other groups and access services, favours the convergence of the different 
conceptions of MA and MA services developed in other fields, and encourages the design of solutions 
that are more inclusive (Jankowska, 2017, forthcoming; Romero-Fresco, forthcoming). MA is wider 
than AVT and cannot be merely reduced to a sub-area of TS. It is a broader, interdisciplinary area, 
that criss-crosses many well-established fields, including translation studies and AVT. However, 
it cannot be entirely and exclusively reduced to any of them, because its true nature is that of being 
an area within the field of AS. An example may help illustrate this point. As said above, over the last 
few years, some filmmakers and MA scholars have been developing and implementing 
a new approach called AFM. According to the original definition, AFM is “the integration of AVT 



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and accessibility as part of the filmmaking process” (Romero-Fresco, 2013, p. 203), which includes 
“not only accessibility for people with sensory impairments but also, in a wider sense, translation 
or linguistic accessibility; in other words, making film accessible to viewers with hearing/visual loss 
and to viewers in other languages” (Romero-Fresco, 2013, p. 223). However, this initial statement 
of AFM presented two main limitations: (a) it framed AFM within the second particularist account 
of MA by restricting its scope to those with sensory and linguistic barriers, and (b) it lacked a strong 
focus on the proactive role of users. Explicitly embracing the rise of AS (Romero-Fresco, 2017b), over 
the past years AFM has moved beyond the particularist account by adopting a new definition that 
fully complies with the universalist account of MA. More specifically, the new definition states that 
AFM concerns how to “make a film accessible to people that cannot, or cannot properly, access it in 
its original form” (Romero-Fresco, 2017a) which mirrors the very definition of the universalist 
account of MA (Greco, 2016b) discussed in the previous pages. Moreover, AFM has also 
implemented a user-centred approach, whereby users are not merely passive recipients of, but 
active agents in, the process of production of accessible audiovisual media (Dangerfield, 2017, 2018). 
Finally, as we already saw, it has framed its methodology in terms of the maker-expert-user gap 
(Branson, 2018; Branson & Romero-Fresco, 2017). As a result, AFM has been able to display its traits 
by modifying itself according to the universal account of accessibility. Consequently, AFM can no 
longer be considered an internal approach of AVT nor of a particularist account of MA, but as applied 
AS within the universalist account of MA. 

5. What is accessibility studies? 

Through the multifaceted process summarised in the previous sections, accessibility has slowly 
but steadily entered a variety of very different fields, moving its way to the forefront and becoming 
one of their most fruitful concepts. It has produced a wealth of new methods and models, 
created radical change in the foundations of many fields, and has given rise to new areas that have 
been gradually converging to constitute the wider field of AS. As I have mentioned in section 2, 
this process can be clearly identified in a number of differing areas. In all of them as well as in society 
at large, accessibility has driven theoretical, methodological, and social innovation, 
leading to the development of thriving research programmes and the implementation of novel 
practices, and, as stated above, has often even provided a new foundation for those very fields. 
This multidimensional and multifaceted process has been leading to the formation of accessibility 
studies, the research field concerned with the critical investigation of accessibility processes 
and phenomena, and the design, implementation and evaluation of accessibility-based 
and accessibility-oriented methodologies. 
 
Accessibility refers to neither the prima facie meaning of access as “having entrance to a system, 
goods and services” nor to the availability of the means or opportunities for “having entrance to” 
(Shadid, Prins, & Mas, 1982), meaning that it implies more than the possibility to reach 
or have “direct access or access through add-on” solutions (Stephanidis & Salvendy, 1998, p. 112; 



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see also Vanderheiden, 1990). As acknowledged in the field of digital sustainability, “[access] is not 
only about the ability to find and retrieve an item, but also the ability to use, view, listen to, interact 
with, display, or run the digital item in such a way that users can be assured that what they are 
viewing satisfies their needs” (Bradley, 2007, p. 154). Therefore, accessibility lies at the heart 
of a whole range of issues, such as acceptability, adaptability, availability, flexibility, personalisation, 
and usability. The character of access as a necessary requirement, as discussed in this 
paper, makes it a concept more primitive, “systematically and logically prior, more basic and more 
fundamental” (Jammer, 1999, p. 6), from which others can be obtained as derived concepts. 
This is why, among the many names suggested for this new field, AS is the most suitable one. 
The fact that accessibility encompasses a multiplicity of other concerns highlights a crucial point 
concerning the second part of the definition of AS. If we adopt Gibson’s theory of affordances 
(Gibson, 1979)X and read it through the lens of accessibility, we can interpret an artefact as a complex 
of disabling constraints and enabling affordances. Then, the relationship between an artefact 
and a user can be analysed in terms of a conditioning friction. The less the design process is based on 
accessibility methodologies, the higher the probability of producing artefacts with a greater number 
of disabling constraints and fewer enabling affordances. This leads to a higher probability of a friction, 
between the artefact and the user, conditioning the space of action and knowledge of the user. 
On the other hand, the more the design process is based on such methodologies, 
the higher the probability of producing artefacts with a greater number of enabling affordances 
and fewer disabling constraints, and thus, the lower the probability of a conditioning friction between 
the artefact and the user. In order to produce artefacts of the latter kind, the design process need 
to be carried out in accordance with the general methodological approach delineated by the three 
shifts analysed in the previous pages. The three shifts define the normative boundaries of epistemic 
and moral action: this general methodological stance of AS allows us not only to design 
and implement new artefacts that foster inclusion, but also to investigate and evaluate all the other 
artefacts, and come up with strategies of intervention. Moreover, if we consider that “user” does not 
stand for some remote and amorphous figure, but rather, has to be understood within the variations 
of human diversity and capabilities (Sen, 1985), we can appreciate the breadth of AS. In addition, 
one can also make out some preliminary traits of a possible ethical and social theory that could be 
developed within this field: a theory that promotes the explicit design of artefacts for the well-being 
of human beings and the promotion of social justice and epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007). 
 
Before concluding by briefly looking at what lies ahead of and for AS, a few steps back to the origins 
of the field may help. Even though AS has emerged as a research field only in recent years, 
its foundation indeed goes back to the ideas and work of Otto Neurath. Among his contributions 
we can find many of the features of AS, e.g. access as a foundational idea for human dignity, 
an interdisciplinarity methodology, the devising of new methods, the importance of users 
and of their knowledge, and the involvement of experts and of different stakeholders in the design 
process. Infused by the spirit of logical positivism, being himself one of the founding and prominent 
members of the Vienna Circle, Neurath was convinced that access to knowledge was fundamental 
for empowering people, especially the most vulnerable (see O. Neurath, 1973c), because only 



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through access to knowledge they “could develop their judgement and become active citizens 
of a democratic society” (M. Neurath, 1946). Between the 1910s and the 1920s, Neurath began 
to work on a method for the visualisation of information, initially called the “Vienna method”, 
in order to “represent social facts pictorially” (O. Neurath in Burke, 2009, p. 211). In 1925, 
he established the Social and Economic Museum in Vienna,XI where he implemented his method 
more analytically. The main goal of the museum was to make knowledge and social facts 
“within reach of everybody” (O. Neurath, 1973d, p. 230). Neurath’s museum adopted a mix 
of instruments and new technologies, including early experiments with animated films, 
which, through the use of his method, made statistical data, facts, and information about the various 
aspects of social life and of the world accessible to the general population. The work was realised 
by a truly interdisciplinary team comprising “the director, two transformers, two chief artists, 
and a number of technicians skilled in the work process [as well as] experts in statistics, history, 
medicine, cartography, geography, engineering, industrial management, history of art, etc.” 
(M. Neurath, 1974, p. 137). The key figure was an expert called “the transformer”, a seminal version 
of the accessibility expert, whose tasks included “to understand the data, to get all necessary 
information from the experts, to decide what is worth transmitting to the public, how to make it 
understandable, how to link it with general knowledge or with information already given in other 
charts” (M. Neurath & Kinross, 2009, p. 78). This role was usually carried out by Marie NeurathXII, 
according to whom “the transformer is the trustee of the public” (M. Neurath & Kinross, 2009, p. 78). 
Over the years, the Neuraths refined and expanded upon the method, renaming it “International 
system of typographic picture education” (Isotype). They exported it from New York to Moscow 
to Nigeria, and applied it to a vast range of media, replicating the same work method over and over 
again. A few examples may better illustrate the vast scope of their contribution. 
Their work on children’s books was tested with experiments performed in schools and, 
through collaboration with C.K. Ogden, the inventor of Basic English, they also produced two texts 
that combined Isotype with Basic English, constituting an early case, if not the very first, 
of easy reading. In 1941, they were contacted by Paul Rotha, a pioneer of British documentary 
filmmaking, who saw in the Isotype method a way to make his films more accessible to a 
wider audience. Once again, the Neuraths replicated the same organisational model they developed 
in Vienna, with the transformer working in close contact with the different departments 
of the filmmaking process, from the director to the scriptwriter, sometimes “already at the first 
stages of conception” (M. Neurath & Kinross, 2009, p. 61), which probably makes this the first explicit 
case of AFMXIII. The importance of the active participation of the users in the design process is 
exemplified by Otto Neurath’s consultancy to the Bilston Borough Council in 1945. When 
discussing a plan to relocate a part of the population to new houses in other areas, Neurath 
underlined that “participation is vital. The whole success of any plan involving the lives of human 
beings depends upon obtaining the assent, encouragement, and co-operation of those human 
beings” (O. Neurath, 1973a, p. 76). These are just a few examples of the richness of Neurath’s 
visionary work. He believed that the idea of a democratic polity founded on human 
dignity and fraternity, like “the distant island of Atlantis” and other great utopias, are constructions 
of “social engineering” (O. Neurath, 1973b, p. 151) that take on “the task of consciously cultivating 



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the future and the possible” (O. Neurath, 1973b, p. 155). He saw making knowledge accessible 
to everyone as fundamentally functional towards making possible the utopia of a democratic future 
possible. 

6. Conclusion: the future commitments of the early days 

Human beings have been successfully adapting to technology for a very long time (Norman, 2013). 
Nonetheless, as we have seen, ICTs are creating a new environment and are reshaping access. 
This is a process that, if not vigilantly supervised and guided, will risk producing new, deep-seated 
forms of discrimination whilst exacerbating old ones, because reshaping access means reshaping the 
very conditions for human dignity. We are epistemic agents and our lives unfold in a knowledge 
space(s). Yet, this space has become a breeding ground of social injustice through epistemic injustice: 
new forms of discrimination based on who can get access and who can’t. All these has been making 
access “a conceptual tool for rethinking our world-view as well as our economic view, making it the 
single most powerful metaphor of the coming age” (Rifkin, 2001, p. 15). Within this context, 
AS is a timely field that, through critical investigation and proactive agency, addresses 
some of the most pressing issues our society is facing, and will face. A field within which it is also 
possible to develop an ethical and social perspective that promotes a culture of (social, ethical, 
political, scientific, technological, etc.) design in order to render our world an environment with less 
disabling constraints and more enabling affordances. What lies ahead of us is a highly-demanding 
task: to accept our role as the trustees of the public, to cultivate the utopia of a just and inclusive 
society, and to work to make it possible despite difficulties and uncertainties we may face, 
as brilliantly expressed once again by Calvino: 
 

The Great Khan's atlas contains also the maps of the promised lands visited in thought 
but not yet discovered or founded: New Atlantis, Utopia, the City of the Sun, Oceana, Tamoe, 
New Harmony, New Lanark, lcaria.  
Kublai asked Marco: 'You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me toward 
which of these futures the favoring winds are driving us.'  
'For these ports I could not draw a route on the map or set a date for the landing. At times 
all I need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of 
lights in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting 
out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed 
with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who 
receives them. If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in 
space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for 
it can stop. (Calvino, 1974, p. 164)XIV 

 
MA was born thanks to the pioneering work of some scholars who envisioned the fundamental traits 
of accessibility. Over the past two decades, MA has been gradually growing into a vast and lively 



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community of deeply-committed scholars, whose work has been advancing the critical role 
of accessibility in our society. As one of the most mature areas in which the process of the formation 
of AS has been taking place, what lies ahead of MA is a task as exciting as it is challenging: 
to fully embrace its identity as an area within AS. By working towards making visible the invisible 
college of AS, of which they are among its founding and more engaged members, 
MA scholars can let AS fulfil its role as a force for critical reflection and a driver for social change. 

Acknowledgements 

The present paper is part of a series of texts on AS that have been keeping me company for a very 
long time. I am grateful to the editorial board of the Journal of Audiovisual 
Translation for the invitation to publish this paper in its inaugural issue and to the two anonymous 
referees for their comments. I introduced the term accessibility studies and discussed 
the ideas presented in this paper during so many talks I have delivered since 2012 that listing them 
all would require a space longer than this very paper. My most sincere thanks to all the participants 
of those meetings for their feedback. I will mention only a few as representatives of all. I introduced 
an early version of section 3 at the ArtLab13 conference held on 24-28 June 2013. An early version 
of section 2 and 6 were debuted at the seminar Expo 2015 per l’Italia held in Martina Franca (Italy) 
on 3 December 2013, co-organised by CENSIS and the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2015. A revised version 
of section 2 and 6 were also presented at the Zerobarriere conference held in Matera (Italy) on 27-
28 September 2014 as part of the candidacy of the city of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019 
(which then was awarded the title), co-organised by the Comune di Matera, the European Network 
for Accessible Tourism, Design for All Europe, the Council of Europe, and many others. 
I delivered the first complete presentation of sections 1-5 at the conference The Future of Media 
Accessibility: Issues and Visions held in Lecce (Italy) on 26-27 June 2017. A version of sections 2, 5 
and 6 was presented at the TransAccess conference held in Krakow on 16 November 2017, co-
organised by the DG Translation of the European Commission and the Chair for Translation Studies 
and Intercultural Communication of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). I wish to thank 
for their kind invitation in the aforementioned meetings: Dino Angelaccio, Ugo Bacchella, Ivana 
Bosso, Valentina Curato, Anna Jankowska, Pete Kercher, Krzysztof Łoboda, Francesco Maietta, 
Simona Martini, Maria Piotrowska. Numerous discussions with Josh Branson, Kate Dangerfield, 
Louise Fryer, Anna Jankowska, Pablo Romero-Fresco, and Davide Ruggieri have helped me refine 
my ideas in a profound way. With Anna Jankowska and Pablo Romero-Fresco in particular I am in far 
greater debt. Our long conversations and their constant support are a rare gift. They have helped me 
sharpen my thought and provided support and encouragement in ways beyond any professional 
level; most likely, this paper would have not seen the light of day without their support. 
Teressa Canosa skilfully copyedited the last version of this paper. All remaining mistakes are mine. 



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Biographical note 

Gian Maria Greco, PhD, is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow and a member 
of the TransMedia Catalonia Research Group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), 
where he directs the project UMAQ. He is Research Associate at GALMA, Universidade de Vigo 
(Spain). His research focuses on the theoretical foundation of accessibility studies and how it relates 
to human rights, the media, and the performing arts.  

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I Italics added, texts between parentheses are in the original paper. 
II Italics added. The original text from the General Comment reads: “The right to adequate food, like any 
other human right, imposes three types or levels of obligations on States parties: the obligations to respect, 
to protect and to fulfil. In turn, the obligation to fulfil incorporates both an obligation to facilitate 

                                                      



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and an obligation to provide. The obligation to respect existing access to adequate food requires States parties 
not to take any measures that result in preventing such access. The obligation to protect requires measures 
by the State to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate 
food. The obligation to fulfil (facilitate) means the State must pro-actively engage in activities intended to 
strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food 
security. Finally, whenever an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right 
to adequate food by the means at their disposal, States have the obligation to fulfil (provide) that right 
directly” (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999, p. 5). 
III Although it has not been possible to trace the date of publication of FIA’s advocacy paper, it may have been 
very likely published during the current presidency of Jean Todt, given the fact that he has made “sustainable 
mobility for all” a trademark of his mandate. 
IV Note that the earliest accounts of MA did not include sign language interpreting, but only AD and SDH. 
V The expression “products, services and environments” refers to the definition of accessibility provided in the 
World Report on Disability (see World Health Organization & World Bank, 2011, p. 301). Hereafter, for brevity, 
I will collectively refer to them as “artefacts”. 
VI The expression “design of accessibility solutions and artefacts” should be intended in the most general sense, 
comprising from policies and legislation to computer software. 
VII The expression “design of accessibility solutions and artefacts” should be intended in the most general 
sense, comprising a very broad range of concepts, from policies and legislation to computer software. 
VIII Italics added. 
IX Some also include audio subtitles. 
X See Fryer (2013) for an application of Gibson’s theory to AD. 
XI This is the English translation used by Neurath himself of “Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien”. 
XII It was a common practice of Marie Neurath, née Reidemeister, to sign her publications using her husband’s 
surname. 
XIII As already said, Neurath had already experimented with animated films in the 1920s. Sadly, no copies 
of them nor a detailed description of how they were made have survived, even though one could suppose 
they were created using the accessible methodology. Reports of a public screening of these films in New York 
in 1933 where published in The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune (see Burke, 2013). 
XIV In the original text the entire quote is in italics. Here, only one phrase is left in italics for emphasis. 


	TransMedia Catalonia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
	Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility, Universidade de Vigo
	Abstract
	Accessibility has come to play a pivotal role on the world’s stage, gradually pervading different aspects of our lives as well as a vast range of fields, giving rise to a plethora of fruitful new ideas, methods and models, and becoming an ever more ke...


	Citation: Greco, G.M. (2018). The nature of accessibility studies. Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), 205-232.
	Editor(s): A. Jankowska & P. Romero-Fresco
	Received: January 22, 2018
	Accepted: June 30, 2018
	Published: November 15, 2018
	Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752659 (project UMAQ).
	Copyright: ©2018 Greco. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are...
	(Calvino, 1974, p. 82)
	1. Introduction
	2. The roots of the accessibility revolution
	3. The three shifts of accessibility
	4. Internal and external forces in the formation of accessibility studies
	5. What is accessibility studies?
	6. Conclusion: the future commitments of the early days
	Acknowledgements
	Biographical note
	References