Museums are highly visual places (De Coster, 2007), where enjoying art, whether alone or in groups, and interpreting its clear and ambivalent signs depend almost exclusively on people’s sight. Therefore, the mediation between art and visitors has been expressed in different forms of communication, namely the labels of the exhibited objects, wall texts, room guides, various pamphlets and brochures, guided visits and audio guides. Whereas these forms may not pose any apparent obstacle to sighted people, the same does not occur with audiences with sensory impairments, be it visual or in terms of hearing. Written-based communication appears as a barrier to the blind and visually-impaired and orally-based communication presents itself as an obstacle to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. In our presentation, we shall focus on the blind and visually-impaired audiences and specifically on the forms of communication that are offered to them within Portuguese museums, bearing in mind that, for these audiences to overcome the absence of sight, communication must be strongly descriptive, that is depend on the guiding criteria of audio description, one of the modes of Audiovisual Translation. Consequently, the issue we intend to question is whether Portuguese museums provide accessible communication for the blind and visually-impaired and enable art to become truly inclusive, which we will attempt to answer on basis of excerpts taken from Portuguese audio guides.

Audio description for the blind and visually-impaired has been around since people have described what is seen. Throughout time, it has evolved and developed in different contexts, starting with daily life, moving into the cinema and television, then across other performing arts, museums and galleries, historical sites and public places. Audio description is above all an issue of accessibility and of providing visually-impaired people with the same rights to have access to culture, education and ultimately social life. It has to do with making them feel part of society

Grammar has always been present in different teaching methods and approaches. However, the place of grammar in these methods has shifted throughout the centuries, from a central place in the grammar and translation approach to a more eclectic and integrated approach. In Portugal, it was harsh to overcome the weight of tradition and free the teaching of languages from traditional and old-fashioned approaches. Our purpose is to thoroughly analyse the 1995 and 1996 syllabi, which were issued by the Ministry of Education and oriented the teaching of different subjects in Basic and Secondary Education, and compare them to the new Curricular Targets that saw the light between 2013 and 2015. Another stakeholder in this equation is the role of publishing houses, which put out coursebooks for schools. We intend to complement our work with the micro- and macroanalysis of a sample of English coursebooks, which will enable us to reach an overall perspective of the Portuguese three-term equation.

Until the end of the 20th century Audiovisual Translation (AVT) sought to fight against the yoke of Translation Studies, which enveloped it in what Díaz Cintas called “the Cinderella mantle” that prevented AVT to stand autonomous. Nonetheless, Gottlieb (1991) regarded the 1990s as the golden age of AVT and thus, in 2008, Díaz Cintas acknowledged that such mantle had “(partially) evaporated”. Can we nowadays consider AVT as a “full-blown research field in its own right” as Bączkowska (2015) upholds, along with other authors? Starting from this premise, I aim at discussing the extent of evolution within AVT which, on the outset, mainly covered subtitling and dubbing to then encompass new modes mushrooming at a fast pace, such as audiodescription or subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, to name just a few. Therefore, numerous scholars have opted for the phrase ‘media accessibility’ so as to emphasise the particularities of these developing modes that focus primarily on making cultural venues accessible to people with sensory impairments, which move further from a more traditional definition of translation. These venues include not only TV and cinema, but also the performing arts (i.e. theatre, opera or dance) or museums and galleries. Drawing on examples of good practices that have been adopted in Portugal, I intend to reflect upon the role AVT has played in enhancing cultural access.

This research is based on the assumption that audiovisual translation (AVT ) performs a social and cultural function over its viewers, thus still justifying studies that focus on linguistic issues. This is particularly striking for the reading literacy in countries such as Portugal, that are traditionally subtitling countries, even if dubbing and voice-over are also occasionally used, particularly in the case of documentaries. The purpose for this research is to analyze the examples of restricted lexical occurrence, i.e. set phrases or semantic phrasemes (Mel’čuk 1995), depending on the terminology chosen, within the two versions of the AVT – subtitling and voice-over – of a documentary film called “The Real Da Vinci Code”. In order to achieve this purpose, we chose to follow a case study methodology that allowed us to center our attention on and single out a specific feature of language – set phrases – used in this type of audiovisual texts – documentary films.

International legislation has regarded culture as a human right since the endorsement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a right of which no one should be deprived regardless of their personal traits. In the last decades, cultural heritage has awakened to new needs and demands: not only has it become a focus of interest for the tourism sector, but it has also been targeted for accessibility reasons. The United Nations (s.d., online) hold that accessible tourism (or tourism for all) is of the utmost importance, not only because it “is a central element for responsible and sustainable development policy”, but also since it provides a unique business opportunity – it is estimated that there are 1 billion people with disabilities, not to mention the 2 billion people that are family or caregivers of these persons. As such, accessible tourist offer should be directed to a broad and diverse group that aims at people with impairments, children, seniors, pregnant women, people with obesity, to name just a few.For a number of reasons – commercial, cultural and legal – tourism must be gradually developed from the perspective of accessibility. Chazaud (1997) argued about the need to develop an interface between cultural spaces and visitors, where a number of services are included, from peripheral to more central ones. Similarly, Devile, Jesus & Cruz (2011) support the idea that a tourism product encompasses a set of tangible and intangible components, understood as a whole experience that comprises transport, accommodation, accessible activities, appropriate reception and information, human resources, among others. This approach put forth by these authors entail what we understand as tourism ecosystems. I intend to present examples of good practices that may enhance accessible tourism in Portugal – two museums regarded as exemplary (i.e. Museum of the Council Community of Batalha and the National Museum of Tile), the AccessTUR project for the central region of Portugal, the programme Accessible Beach – Beach for ALL and the project “Culture for All Bragança” (European Social Fund NORTE-07-4230-FSE-000058). I wish to critically discuss them by putting forward the objectives, implementation context and resources created to promote inclusion for all as far as tourism is concerned.

A publicação de documentos internacionais e nacionais sobre a acessibilidade e a inclusão permitiram a crescente presença de diferentes públicos em espaços culturais, sobretudo devido ao reconhecimento do direito à fruição e participação na cultura das pessoas com deficiência e incapacidade em situação de equidade. Não obstante, a acessibilidade ainda continua a ser encarada como uma questão física e arquitetónica. Neste sentido, Dodd & Sandel (1988) propõem 8 dimensões de acesso em espaços culturais: acesso físico, acesso à informação, acesso emocional, acesso financeiro, acesso cultural, acesso à tomada de decisões, acesso intelectual e acesso sensorial. É neste contexto que surge o “Cultura para Todos Bragança”, projeto da Câmara Municipal de Bragança, com financiamento regional do programa NORTE 2020 (NORTE-07-4230-FSE-000058), cuja execução está a cargo do Instituto Politécnico de Bragança. Esta iniciativa tem como objetivo fundamental promover a acessibilidade de pessoas com deficiência e incapacidade auditiva, intelectual e visual em 5 espaços culturais de Bragança e engloba 7 ações, entre as quais o diagnóstico da acessibilidade destes espaços, a criação de recursos destinados aos públicos preferenciais, a adaptação de espetáculos ao vivo e a produção de recursos táteis. No âmbito da primeira ação, foi avaliada a acessibilidade destes espaços culturais que se concretizou em duas etapas. Em primeiro lugar, a equipa científica realizou visitas a estes espaços para aferir as condições de acessibilidade, com base na matriz disponibilizada pela Direção Geral do Património Cultural (DGPC, 2021). Esta matriz encontra-se organizada em 10 itens – 1. Edifício; 2. Localização; 3. Exposições; 4. Comunicação; 5. Segurança; 6. Consultoria; 7. Formação; 8. Emprego; 9. Avaliação e 10. Gestão – que foram avaliados por observação direta e por entrevista e apoiados em registos fotográficos. Seguidamente, prosseguiu-se com um conjunto de visitas orientadas pelos técnicos destes espaços a consultores com deficiência e incapacidade auditiva, intelectual e visual. Para a recolha de dados recorreu-se à observação não participante, complementada por entrevistas semiestruturadas. Considerando o acima exposto, a presente comunicação tem como objetivo apresentar as principais reflexões da equipa no que se refere ao desenvolvimento deste processo de avaliação das condições de acessibilidade dos espaços abrangidos pelo “Cultura para Todos Bragança”. Entre estas, destacamos o seguinte: a aplicação da matriz da DGPC facilitou este processo de avaliação não só por estar organizada de forma sistemática e se apoiar em bibliografia internacional, mas também por estar em conformidade com o Decreto-lei n.º163/2006; as visitas com os consultores com deficiência e incapacidade possibilitaram-nos recolher dados adicionais que corroboram a identificação prévia de barreiras aos níveis da acessibilidade física, sensorial, intelectual e emocional; e, por fim, a triangulação das análises qualitativa e quantitativa consolidou a metodologia de intervenção adotada. Paralelamente, uma das conclusões mais relevantes desta ação de diagnóstico prende-se com a urgência de sensibilizar e capacitar os recursos humanos que atuam nos diferentes espaços culturais para as questões da diversidade, acessibilidade, participação e inclusão, assim como com a necessidade de serviços de acolhimento de qualidade para pessoas com deficiência e incapacidade.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream revolved around equality among people with different skin colours and cultural backgrounds in mainstream white America. Despite this, the underlying motivation was freedom: freedom of speech, of thought, of expression, of movement, freedom to access education, libraries and books. However, books have always been at the heart of freedom-restricting, authoritarian, dictatorial, alas, irrational regimes. From a historical perspective, we can refer to numerous events where people’s access to information was to be limited (Eliot & Rose, 2007). Such examples are: the burning of Confucius’s books by Qin Shi Huang in the 3rd c. BCE or of the Library of Alexandria by Caliph Omar in 642 CE (Freedom to Read, online, s.d.), but, fast-forwarding to the 20th century, we have the Nazi book-burnings (Lewy, 2016) and, even more recently, restrictions in the access to social media. These cases provide us with the background against which I aim to discuss a current trend called “banned books” in the USA, according to which certain US states forbid specific books from being read, analysed and discussed at schools and their presence in the respective libraries (ALA, 2021). In my presentation, I will seek to put forth examples of banned books in the USA, from literature classics to more contemporary ones, and identify the reasons for their ban. Ultimately, attention must be paid to the awareness movement developed by a coalition of organisations, among which the American Library Association, which celebrate yearly the Banned Books Week since 1982 and pinpoint the books that were targeted by this anti-democratic decision to censor people’s freedom to leisurable and varied readings.

The linguistic rights of Mirandese were enshrined in Portugal in 1999, though its “discovery” dates back to the very end of the 19th century at the hands of Leite de Vasconcellos. For centuries, it was the first or only language spoken by people living in the northeast of Portugal, particularly the district of Miranda do Douro. As a minority language, it has always moved among three dimensions. On the one hand, the need to assert and defend this language and have it acknowledged by the country, which proudly believe(d) in their monolingual history. Unavoidably, this has ensued the action of translation, especially active from the mid of the 20th century onwards, with an emphasis on the translation of the Bible and Portuguese canonical literature, as well as other renowned literary forms (e.g. The Adventures of Asterix). Finally, the third axis lies in migration, either within Portugal or abroad. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, Mirandese people were forced to leave Miranda do Douro and villages in the outskirts in the thousands. They fled not only due to the deeply entrenched poverty, but also the almost complete absence of future prospects, enhanced by the fact that they were regarded as not speaking “good” Portuguese, but rather a “charra” language, and as ignorant backward people. This period coincided with the building of dams on the river Douro and the cultural and linguistic shock that stemmed from this forceful contact, which exacerbated their sense of not belonging and of social shame. Bearing all this in mind, we seek to approach the role that migration played not only in the assertion of Mirandese as a language in its own right, but also in the empowerment of new generations of Mirandese people, highly qualified and politically engaged in the defence of this minority language, some of whom were former migrants. Thus, we aim to depict Mirandese’s political situation before and after the endorsement of the Portuguese Law no. 7/99.

“Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future: Research-Based Digital Learning from Testimonies of Survivors and Rescuers of the Holocaust” [ID 740639658] was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Via the international partnership (USC Shoah Foundation, Zachor Foundation, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, and the University of Luxembourg), the CEAUL team developed a suite of materials for educators and the general public using testimony from witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust through digital tools, with an innovative pedagogical methodology. As stated by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (online), “Survivor testimonies are first-hand accounts from individuals who had lived through the Holocaust or genocide and their stories help students to understand and empathise more deeply with the human (and inhuman) aspects of mass atrocities”. The project aimed to achieve seven objectives, of which we highlight the following: 1) the research in the Visual History Archive of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation (an archive that contains 54,975 video testimonies of survivors and rescuers of the Holocaust – 563 in Portuguese); 2) the creation of a Portuguese language microsite on the IWitness platform for the resources developed; and 3) the development of 6 digital, testimony-based educational materials on the IWitness platform in Portuguese. The assumption of such a project consisted of effectively integrating ICT into education materials to improve students’ skills, namely what has come to be known as 21st century skills (e.g., critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration). Despite the seemingly historical emphasis of the project’s resources, their main goal has been to stir discussion in the History and Portuguese Language classrooms, to name a few, and encourage empathy based on historical events that regrettably are still up-to-date. Therefore, we intend to present one of the six activities created within this project that target the Portuguese compulsory secondary education and Higher Education levels, where we sought to build a story around the topic “The Rescuers”. By using the strategy of storytelling (cf. Schallié & Spaar, 2021, online), each activity intertwined excerpts of different testimonies that ultimately enabled the construction of a/the bigger picture. We also wish to account on the manner students received this particular activity, by retrieving information from teachers and students’ reports.