Beyond Compliance: Inviting Audience Insights to Drive Participatory Accessibility in Film Media

Absztrakt

Across Europe, expanding standards and legislation have mandated subtitling and other access services in audiovisual media, strengthening foundations for equal access. While compliance-based frameworks have increased availability and introduced minimum quality requirements in several EU countries, including Slovakia, Neves (2008) has long argued that legal standardisation—though valuable—often privileges technical provision over experiential depth. Measurable criteria alone cannot ensure meaningful engagement with film, where understanding emerges through layered aesthetic, narrative, and sonic elements (Perez 2025; Perez, Zahorák and Jurigová 2025). This paper advocates a shift from purely compliance-driven models toward implementation of participatory accessibility that foregrounds audience experience and collaboration. Focusing on Deaf audiences and subtitling, it draws on findings from a longitudinal study exploring Deaf viewers’ and professionals’ perspectives on subtitling preferences at film events, complemented by ongoing research into Slovak Deaf viewers’ preferences in TV broadcasting and VOD across two observed age groups. The findings indicate that compliance with existing standards does not always correspond to perceived accessibility or quality. Recurring issues include reductive or generic representations of sound in subtitles, inconsistent treatment of silence and music, and the application of subtitling strategies that either omit contextually relevant information or overdetermine interpretation.