Introduction. The value of accessibility in the cultural and creative industries: Translation-driven settings

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between translation, accessibility and the cultural creative industries, as well as on the different varieties of genres included in these industries as cultures of accessibility. The accessibility of CCI has grown exponentially in different parts of the globe and has increasingly become part of projects of significant importance in contemporary societies that rely on informational, global, and networked systems of communication, i.e., developed countries. CCI exist within public-domain areas and are stimulated by the critical rethinking of the means which can be used to support cultural development. CCI are in fact driven by structures of the knowledge-based economy, where information, originality, and creativity contribute to providing stimuli to their rise. Their emergence is the result of advances in cultural spheres and movements, as well as of the growing importance of cultures that permeate every level of social life, thus, also involving a wider range of domains, such as urban spaces, clothing, design, and not simply the arts or the media industries. In setting the twenty-first century scenario of what has been described as “cultures of accessibility” (Neves 2018,415), we are witnessing the climb of “a collective awareness towards inclusion and the provision of equal access to all people in a vast array of contexts, from health to education; from work to entertainment; and from travel to the media, among others”(ibidem). As testified in the literature (Romero Fresco2013, 2019; Jankowska and Szarkowska 2015; Jankowska 2019; Greco 2016b), “the ubiquitous effects of accessibility have [...] led some scholars to argue for the emergence of a new research field, namely accessibility studies(AS)” (italics in the original, Greco 2018,206) with the purpose of including the theoretical, socio-cultural, and political revolutions pertaining to accessibility –a wide ambit that embraces human rights principles, information and communication technologies, and political and economic decisions.