More opportunities and a better adaptation: the demands of the deaf to the audiovisual world

"This is our moment".

This is how Troy Kotsur pronounced himself last March in his acceptance speech after winning the Oscar for best actor for his role in

a film that revolves around a deaf family in which only the daughter is hearing.

With his statement, the interpreter wanted to remind all people with hearing disabilities that they finally had the opportunity to be seen and heard in an industry in which their representation has historically been minimal.

Despite advances in this area, the world of cinema and audiovisual continues to be a difficult territory for deaf people, both for those who want to work in the sector and for those who simply aspire to enjoy a movie or a series in a movie room or at home.

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The deaf don't want broken books

Domingo Pisón (Madrid, 31 years old) is part of the small community of deaf filmmakers in Spain.

His story has a distinctive feature: he was the first student of his condition to study at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, where he trained in audiovisuals.

“With no previous experience, the teachers didn't know how to deal with a deaf person.

To analyze the fragments of the films I needed subtitles in Spanish.

Sometimes they looked for me, but not always.

With Spanish cinema it was already unfeasible, ”explains Pisón in a cafeteria near the Ideal cinema in the capital, one of the spaces he frequents to watch subtitled films.

His passion for the seventh art comes from afar and has a specific origin.

“I learned what the world is thanks to the movies.

When I was little

my mother would pause Disney movies and ask me things like what Snow White had in her hand.

I had to answer him precisely.

In a certain way, I have wanted to dedicate myself to the audiovisual world as a form of gratitude”, she comments.

As a director and screenwriter, Pisón knows very well what it means to work behind the camera being deaf.

His first professional product, a short film called

(2014), with which he won two awards, was made when he was finishing his university studies.

“As a screenwriter I haven't had any difficulties because I'm deaf, but as a director, yes.

As I am coordinating a team of listeners, I have to check everything they are saying and that supposes a small delay in communication.

It can happen that they say lights and that I don't know about it”, says the filmmaker.

One of the things Pisón regrets about that short film is the fact that the protagonist, a deaf woman trapped in an abusive relationship, had to be interpreted by a hearing sign language interpreter.

“Three days after filming, the deaf actress could not come to work due to poor health.

If it had been just my project, I wouldn't have minded waiting, but since I was waiting for a grant and I had limited deadlines, I had no choice but to go ahead”, argues the director.

However, he assures that the woman did a good job under the circumstances, to the point that many thought that she was truly deaf.

Who is a professional in the world of acting with a hearing disability is Ángela Ibáñez (Madrid, 33 years old).

She currently resides in Paris, but her career began at a very young age in Spain, where she joined a small amateur theater company organized by the Madrid Association of Parents and Friends of the Deaf (ASPAS).

Although she studied law and initially had no intention of dedicating herself professionally to theater and cinema, a project by the National Dramatic Center changed everything for her.

"The truth is that I have not encountered many challenges as an actress, since, fortunately, I have always worked with people prepared to welcome a deaf person," explains Ibáñez by mail.

She does, she also highlights that it would be convenient to have more professionals with knowledge about the value of sign language in the audiovisual world.

“Many times a deaf actor is given a script in Spanish without adaptation to sign language.

It is as if you gave someone who only speaks Spanish a text in English.

They would also need more

who know how to translate the text into sign language, since, for example, interpreting a deaf person with a low cultural level is not the same as interpreting one with university studies”, he reasons.

Both Ibáñez and Pisón agree that, as Kotsur stated in his Oscar speech, the way is being opened for greater representation of the deaf community in film and television.

Beyond

, which is a

of the French

(2014), the presence of deaf or deaf actors and characters has been noted in films in recent years such as

(2016),

(2017),

(2018),

(2019),

(2020), and

(2021).

Long before it was

(1986), co-starring Marleen Matlin, a referent of the collective who also appears in

.

Pisón insists that this growing interest in integrating the deaf population into the audiovisual field should translate into something more than an anecdotal opportunity.

“In 2016 the movie

came out in Spain , in which a real deaf boy appears, Marc Domènech.

It is the first time that this happened in a Spanish fiction.

Since then, six years have passed and nothing else has been done with him”, criticizes the filmmaker.

Movie sessions and TV shows

As much as the stories on the big screen are increasingly inclusive, movie theaters duly adapted to the needs of the deaf community are still a rarity in Spain.

Very often they have to settle for viewing subtitled films, which in the vast majority of cases are foreign productions in the original version.

From the AG Bell International association, dedicated to the care of people with hearing disabilities, it is specified that for an adequate adaptation, the projection in cinemas should have "the installation of a magnetic induction ring or loop" in the rooms so that those who have hearing aids or a cochlear implant can better follow the stories.

As for the subtitling,

In terms of accessibility, the new General Law of Audiovisual Communication, which came into force on July 9, is fully involved.

Article 101 of the text establishes that audiovisual service providers are obliged to "guarantee that the incorporation of signed content is carried out observing the quality criteria collected by the Center for Linguistic Normalization of Spanish Sign Language", as well as "the progressive compliance with the subtitling quality requirements”.

In the field of commercial television, the law establishes in its article 102 that a minimum of 80% of the programs must have subtitles (previously it was 75%), and that at least five hours of weekly broadcasts must have subtitles. sign language translation (previously two hours).

For public television

But in the field of cinema, the pandemic also did a lot of damage in the adaptation of theaters to deaf audiences.

The analysis carried out in 2021 by the Department of the Accessible Cultural Agenda of the Spanish Center for Subtitling and Audio Description (CESyA) determined that accessible cinema sessions had fallen by 88.72% in 2020. Ángela Ibáñez is well aware of this lack .

“In a big city like Madrid, I only know of one cinema that shows Spanish films with subtitles.

That is why we settle for platforms such as Netflix or HBO, but there they do not add any additional information to the text, such as sound effects or the name of the song that is playing, ”says the actress.

That they do not forget about them is the main claim of the deaf public.

At the labor level, Domingo Pisón makes it clear what they need:

“That they do not judge us for our deafness rather than for our qualities.

That they are not afraid, that they trust and that they give us more real opportunities both in front of and behind the cameras”.

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