Cultural accessibility can be approached from many different perspectives: a film, a work of art, a training programme or even the way we organise an event.
During our recent stay in Bucharest, we had the opportunity to explore these different perspectives through three activities promoted by the Instituto Cervantes: an artistic intervention at a museum, an accessible screening of the documentary Inclusivity – Beyond Cinema, and an inclusive filmmaking workshop for the Romanian audiovisual sector.
Three different initiatives with the same underlying idea: to integrate accessibility into culture from the outset and to work alongside the people who will ultimately experience it.
An Intruder in the Museum: describing art from a different perspective
Our first activity took us to the Spanish Art Gallery at the National Museum of Art of Romania as part of An Intruder in the Museum, an initiative promoted by the Instituto Cervantes.
For this project, we chose The Origin of Painting, a work by Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro that I had the opportunity to discover alongside the museum’s director.
The aim was to create a text that would offer a personal and sensory way of approaching the artwork. To do so, I applied the methodology developed in my book Journey to the Heart of a Painting, conceived to explore new ways of describing art and making it accessible to people with visual disabilities.
A truly shared screening
The second activity was a screening of our feature documentary Inclusivity – Beyond Cinema, followed by a discussion with the audience.
Attendees included audiovisual professionals, students from the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, festival organisers, and people with visual and hearing disabilities. The Spanish Ambassador to Romania also attended the event.
One of the most interesting aspects of the session was the combination of linguistic and sensory accessibility measures put in place.
The film was screened with Romanian subtitles, while the discussion was interpreted live. The sign language interpreter also received the spoken translation through headphones, allowing her to convey the conversation to the Deaf attendees.
The session itself also required us to respond to a specific need. As blind Romanian audience members were present, parts of the film’s content were described orally in real time.
It was a good demonstration of something we often advocate: designing an accessible event requires planning, but also listening, flexibility and the ability to respond to the people who are actually in the room.
Open Screen: working directly with audiovisual projects
The third activity was Open Screen: Audiovisual Accessibility from the Outset, a workshop organised by the Instituto Cervantes in Bucharest, EUNIC Romania and the Animest Association as part of the Animest Împreună initiative.
According to Radio Romania International, it was the first workshop of its kind to be held in Romania.
Ahead of the workshop, an open call was launched for production companies and audiovisual professionals in Bucharest to submit their projects. The response allowed us to work with productions at very different stages: from initial ideas that had not yet reached the screenplay stage to films already in post-production or preparing for distribution.
This diversity was particularly valuable because it demonstrated that accessibility can be incorporated at any stage. However, the earlier it enters the creative process, the greater the opportunities to integrate it organically.
Learning accessibility by putting it into practice
Rather than working solely with theoretical examples, we used the participants’ own projects.
We analysed screenplays, sequences and creative decisions to explore how accessibility resources could be incorporated. In some cases, for example, we found that the screenplay itself already contained information that could be used for audio description, increasing fidelity to the original work while simplifying the subsequent process.
Blind participants also joined us in the classroom and were able to give direct feedback on one of the audio description exercises.
The outcome was particularly significant: during the workshop itself, one of the filmmakers created accessibility for her own film.
That small step captures much of the philosophy behind Open Screen. Our goal is not for audiovisual professionals to leave a training course dependent on us, but for them to acquire the knowledge, tools and judgement they need to start making their own informed decisions.
Accessibility is also learned through creating
One of the testimonies gathered during the experience highlighted an issue we still encounter frequently: many audiovisual professionals complete their studies without ever receiving training in accessibility.
This is why we consider it particularly valuable to work with filmmakers, production companies, students and festival organisers through their own creative processes.
Bucharest once again showed us that universal design can travel across languages, countries and disciplines.
And perhaps that is one of the best outcomes any training programme can achieve: not only explaining how to make a work accessible, but helping its creators realise that they can do it themselves.
