School of Applied Linguistics Proceedings of the 3rd Swiss Conference on Barrier-free Communication (BfC 2020) Winterthur (online), 29 June – 4 July 2020 ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences Institute of Translation and Interpreting Susanne J. Jekat, Steffen Puhl, Luisa Carrer, Alexa Lintner (Eds.) This work is a joint effort of the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and the University of Geneva. It is approved by swissuniversities and funded by federal contributions in the framework of the Project “P-16: Proposal and implementation of a Swiss research centre for barrier-free communication” (2017–2020). Disclaimer The statements, opinions and data contained in this publication are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publishers and the editors. The responsibility for linguistic and formal correctness lies with the authors. The editorial team made every effort to ensure that this document is accessible to all. If the readers experience any difficulty in accessing content, they are encouraged to contact the editors at [email protected]. © 2021 The Authors (Individual Papers) © 2021 The Editors (Collection) 2021. Winterthur, ZHAW digitalcollection DOI: 10.21256/zhaw-3001 Scientific Review Board Michaela Albl-Mikasa, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland Tatjana Binggeli, Swiss Federation of the Deaf SGB-FSS, Switzerland Bettina Bock, University of Cologne, Germany Pierrette Bouillon, University of Geneva, Switzerland Christiane Hohenstein, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland Susanne J. Jekat, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland Heike Elisabeth Jüngst, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (FHWS), Germany Martin Kappus, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland Christiane Maaß, University of Hildesheim, Germany Anna Matamala, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain Elisa Perego, University of Trieste, Italy Franz Pöchhacker, University of Vienna, Austria Isabel Rink, University of Hildesheim, Germany Silvia Rodríguez Vazquez, University of Geneva, Switzerland Pablo Romero-Fresco, University of Vigo, Spain, and University of Roehampton, UK Klaus Schubert, University of Hildesheim, Germany Irene Strasly, University of Geneva, Switzerland Gottfried Zimmermann, Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart, Germany Coordination and Editing ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland Susanne J. Jekat, Luisa Carrer, Alexa Lintner, Fabienne Riesen and Steffen Puhl (Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany) Contact [email protected] IUED Institute of Translation and Interpreting, School of Applied Linguistics ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland https://www.zhaw.ch/en/linguistics/research/barrier-free-communication/ https://bfc.unige.ch/en/ Preface The 3rd Swiss Conference on Barrier-free Communication was the third and final conference to be held as part of the project entitled “Proposal and implementation of a Swiss research centre for barrier-free communication” (2017–2020). This project, a cooperation between the Institute of Translation and Interpreting of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Geneva, was funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, the ZHAW and the University of Geneva, and was supported by the Swiss University Conference. The main goal of the project was to investigate how access to higher education in Switzerland can be facilitated for students with disabilities. The project aimed to develop sustainable methods and processes to provide as much barrier-free or “low-barrier” access to information and learning materials as possible. The project further explored how people with visual, hearing, or intellectual disabilities, as well as speakers with little knowledge of the local language, can be generally supported to communicate effectively, gain barrier-free access to information and thus live safe and independent lives. The first edition of the conference was held on 15–16 September 2017 in Winterthur, Switzerland. It set out to offer both a theoretical and an empirical perspective on the state of the art in the field (cf. BfC 2017 Proceedings). One year later, the 2nd Conference on Barrier-free Communication, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 9–10 November 2018, looked further into accessibility in educational settings (cf. BfC 2018 Proceedings). Building on the 2017 and 2018 events, the 2020 conference provided a wider international forum for over 130 participants from all over Europe, the USA and Australia to debate the most recent progress and future challenges in barrier-free communication. As these proceedings clearly show, the conference was centred on all aspects of the field. Over 80 internationally renowned and early career researchers, academics, practitioners and members of the target groups from 15 different countries shared their latest findings from inclusive research and some of the best practices in audio description (AD), intralingual live subtitling, Easy and Plain Language, web accessibility and Sign Language. Accessibility in inclusive primary and tertiary educational settings is explored in the first section of this volume. Casalegno discusses the potential of Easy Language as a tool to support pupils with special educational needs, while Girard-Groeber, Parpan- Blaser, Lichtenauer and Antener propose action principles that should guide research and further education in audience-oriented communication. Hohenstein and Zavgorodnia close this section by examining the role of Sign Language and complementary hybrid practices in assisting deaf and hard-of-hearing students in higher education settings in Switzerland. Section 2 concentrates on accessible healthcare communication, a very well represented research area at BfC 2020. Zhao and Lyu emphasise the crucial role of health communication materials in promoting public health awareness and evaluate the readability and comprehensibility of salt intake and health-related digital news in Australia. Similarly, Ahrens, Hernández Garrido, Keller, Kröger, Rink and Schulz introduce current research carried out by the BK-Med group at the University of Hildesheim and focusing on the comprehensibility and acceptability of different medical text types for a variety of target groups. The authors in this section also look at ways to ensure equity of access to primary healthcare for vulnerable populations, including I refugees, migrants and deaf people. Liu, Ji and Bouillon draw attention to the increasing need for interlingual communication in medical service settings and point out how the higher cost of human translators has driven the development of machine translation technologies and tools. In this context, both Bouillon, David, Strasly and Spechbach and Norré, Bouillon, Gerlach and Spechbach present the BabelDr patient response interface — an online speech-enabled fixed-phrase translator specifically designed for medical dialogue — and report findings from two preliminary surveys on user perspective of avatar technology and patient comprehension of Arasaac and Sclera pictographs respectively. Accessibility in culture and tourism is the focus of Section 3. Gandin reports that accessible tourism services will be needed by 27% of the European population by 2030. However, as she points out, there is still a significant divide between provision and demand of accessible tourism services in Europe. Against this backdrop, Gandin analyses linguistic and structural features that could improve accessibility in tourism, including augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and Easy and Plain Language. Likewise, De Appolonia, Rocco and Dattolo concern themselves with a bottom-up, inclusive approach to art and culture dissemination in both tourism and educational settings, and show how their Talking Map® of the UNESCO site of Aquileia in north-eastern Italy can enable access to, and ease the understanding of, historical and archaeological contents. The authors in Section 4 look at audiovisual accessibility for blind and visually impaired people from several perspectives. Snyder provides an insight into the tenets of inclusive design, emphasising that access techniques can be incorporated within the actual development of a film and not just in the post-production stage. Snyder claims that, in this way, AD would not be simply an “add-on” but an aesthetic innovation and an organic part of the work that can benefit all people. The section then moves on to two reception studies by Gzara and Karantzi respectively. Gzara deals with ethnicity and race in AD and argues that the very act of describing the ethnicity of a character poses a series of politically charged issues to which there is no straightforward answer. For her part, Karantzi introduces her research on AD and audio subtitles of foreign animation films in Greek and explores the integration of touch in the target audience’s filmic experience. To close this section, Schaeffer-Lacroix, Mälzer, Berland and Schulz identify procedures for semi-automatic translation of AD scripts using corpus-driven data, while David and Pajonczek describe a VIDEO TO VOICE all-in-one platform — comprising a text-to-speech AD authoring tool and a virtual recording studio for audio post-production — which facilitates time savings and leads to reduced costs in AD production. Section 5 is entirely dedicated to linguistic issues