Creating Born Accessible Information Videos for Inclusive Crisis Communication

Lessons Learned from the ICC Project

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v8i1.2025.323

Keywords:

media accessibility, born accessible communication, crisis communication

Abstract

In recent years, the field of media accessibility (MA) has undergone profound changes and paradigm shifts. Key aspects in these shifts include: a move from particularist accounts to universalist accounts of accessibility (Greco, 2018, 2022; Greco & Jankowska, 2020); others are a move from maker-centred approaches to user-centred approaches, including greater participation of people with the lived experience of disability (Greco, 2018; Romero-Fresco, 2020) and a move away from the post hoc addition of access services after the creative process is finished, to an ab ovo attention to accessibility from the very first design stages of that process. In this paper, we report on the application of these principles in creating an animation video that is as broadly accessible as possible. The video was developed in the context of a research project on inclusive crisis communication. For the development of the video, we adopted a participatory methodology with an iterative feedback loop, in which experts and end-users were asked to provide their feedback during every design phase, which was evaluated and taken into account during the subsequent phases. The results showed that including users in the development process and considering accessibility from the start is feasible and has considerable advantages. On the other hand, using a universalist approach that considers different access modalities at the same time in one single product poses considerable challenges.

Lay summary

The field of media accessibility (MA) is currently undergoing various fundamental changes. People working in the field have started to realise that MA services should no longer exclusively target one specific target group but should actually serve the entire population. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that accessibility should not merely be an initiative taken by the maker, but that end users should be included in the creative process to guarantee the end product serves their concrete needs. Finally, both experts in MA and users of MA services advocate that accessibility should be considered from the very first design stage rather than being added as an afterthought once the (audiovisual) product is completely finished. However, to date, very little research has been done to study how these essential shifts play out in practice.

In the present paper, we report on the application of these new principles in the creation of a fully accessible animation video that was developed in the context of a research project on inclusive crisis communication. We made sure that accessibility was taken into account from the very beginning, and we included end-users of the various access services (including easy language, audio description, subtitling and sign language interpreting), gathering and implementing their feedback in every stage of the design process. The results showed that considering access from the start and including end-users in the development process is definitely feasible and offers various advantages. On the other hand, combining various access services in a single product to make it fully accessible poses clear challenges, and the solutions implemented to solve them are sometimes conflicting or even mutually exclusive.

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Author Biographies

Gert Vercauteren, University of Antwerp

Gert Vercauteren is a tenure track assistant professor in translation and interpreting studies at the University of Antwerp. He teaches translation technology and audiovisual translation, and his research focuses on media accessibility in general and audio description in particular. He was involved in various national and international research projects on access and currently conducts research on the impact of audio description on the cognitive effort invested by the target audience and on the effect of the language of audio description on their immersion.

Nina Reviers, University of Antwerp

Nina Reviers (University of Antwerp) is professor in Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting Studies and member of the TricS research group. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies  (University of Antwerp, 2018). Her research focuses on Media Accessibility, exploring the friction between accessibility, translation, technology and artistic creation. As co-founder of the OPEN Expertise Centre for Accessible Media and Culture, she values participatory approaches to access research. She is editorial board member of JAT and member of the Languages and the Media Steering Committee.

Anna Jankowska, University of Antwerp

Anna Jankowska, PhD, is a Professor at the Department of Translators and Interpreters of University of Antwerp and former Assistant Lecturer in the Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). She was a visiting scholar at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona within the Mobility Plus program of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2016-2019). Her recent research projects include studies on audio description process, mobile accessibility and software (Audiomovie - Cinema for All and OpenArt - Modern Art for All), the viability of translating audio description scripts from foreign languages, multiculturalism in audio description, audio description for foreign films and the history of audiovisual translation. She is also the founder and president of the Seventh Sense Foundation which provides audio description and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Mieke Vandenbroucke, University of Antwerp

Mieke Vandenbroucke is an associate research professor in linguistic pragmatics at the University of Antwerp and Secretary General of the International Pragmatics Association. She was a Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley in 2016-2017. She conducts and coordinates fundamental and applied research at the intersection of sociolinguistics, pragmatics and urban studies, with a particular interest in the impact of globalisation and migration on multilingual urban settings in Europe, institutional discourse and language policy.

Wessel van de Veerdonk, Thomas More University College

Wessel van de Veerdonk is an epidemiologist (PhD) and research coordinator for the Thomas More University of Applied Sciences and is affiliated to Social Epidemiology and Health Policy research department of the University of Antwerp. Wessels research focusses on prevention in the health and care sector and has specific experience in targeting underserved people in society. This is important to combat the existing health inequity in healthcare and combat new introductions of health inequity for vulnerable
populations by e.g. innovations or technological advancements. Wessels passion in research is all about practical application and implementation to reach clinical effectiveness for impact on people’s quality of life.

Heleen Van Opstal, Agentschap Integratie en Inburgering

Heleen Van Opstal has been active in the diversity sector for more than 20 years. From 2015 to 2021, she headed the service of social interpreting and translation at Atlas, the Antwerp municipal agency for integration and civic integration. During the COVID-19 crisis, her department was responsible for providing multilingual crisis communication (+32 languages) on behalf of the Belgian National Crisis Center, the Flemish Crisis Center, and the City of Antwerp. Subsequently, from 2021 onwards, she guided the Integration and Civic Integration sector in its further digital transition and led numerous digital projects.

As program manager for customer-focused services, she has been supporting the Flemish Agency for Integration and Civic Integration since 2024 in its growth towards a customer-focused, agile, and data-driven organization.

Lien Vermeire, Nationaal Crisiscentrum

Lien Vermeire (NCCN) worked as a communication officer at the National Crisis Center from 2016 - 2022 and 2024 - 2025. During the COVID-19 crisis, she supervised the translations, interpreters and other inclusive communication actions. She is currently working as a Disaster Relief Coordinator at the Red Cross Flanders.

Cornelia Wermuth, University of Leuven

Cornelia Wermuth is associated professor at KU Leuven (Antwerpen) at the Department of Applied Linguistics. She lectures German grammar and Terminology and IT in the Bachelor in applied language studies and medical translation in the Master in Translation. She completed a PhD in Language and Literature awarded in April 2005 at the Free University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). The topic of her doctoral thesis dealt with the translation of the ICD-9-CM classification and the associated problems. Her main areas of interest are specialized (medical) translation, terminology, translation tools and terminological computer applications, applied cognitive linguistics (medical sublanguage), and frame semantics. Her current research focuses on medical ontologies and their relationship to terminological concept systems. She is also affiliated researcher of the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven and head of the research unit Translation and Technology.

 

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Published

2026-03-26

How to Cite

Vercauteren, G., Reviers, N., Jankowska, A., Vandenbroucke, M., van de Veerdonk, W., Talboom, S., … Wermuth, C. (2026). Creating Born Accessible Information Videos for Inclusive Crisis Communication: Lessons Learned from the ICC Project. Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 9(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.47476/jat.v8i1.2025.323

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2026): Regular Issue

Section

Research articles