Making copyright management agile: Challenges and opportunities in audiovisual translation and media accessibility for a new digital era

Abstract

Digital interactive accessibility services must enable human interaction with the media content beyond consumption, ensuring that people can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the content and contribute to it. All these new types of interactions are also a field of study in audiovisual translation (AVT) and media accessibility (MA), as translation is a form of human-computer interaction (HCI) (O'Brien, Translation Spaces 1:101-122, 2012). Therefore, the role of technology in AVT/MA is a key aspect not only in the process of creation, but also for distribution, delivery, and consumption. This tendency is expected to grow in the coming years as "technology is also the basis of tools to translate or adapt content and tools to consume content" (Matamala in Accessibilitat i traducció audiovisual, 2019). The progressive transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, with the irruption of recent technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), is opening up innovative forms of communication and interaction for users in the digital world. Yet, challenges in relation to intellectual property rights (IPR) management in AVT/MA remain a major concern (Orero et al., 2023; Serrat-Roozen & Oncins, 2023). The following chapter presents the results of a series of focus groups held with professionals and researchers from the different fields of the AVT and MA in the frame of the European project MediaVerse. This three-year project was aimed at designing and testing a framework to allow professionals and laymen to publish multimedia content that may be easily shared. Results presented highlight user's needs and expectations from AVT/MA professionals in relation to copyright management, through the use of blockchain technology to protect and recognise IPR for professionals in these fields.