So for those of you that know me, I’ve been constantly on UCLan SU‘s shoulder regarding accessibility across Pulse and SU in general. It began way back when I first started, and is still going on now; and we’re in semester 2.
Promises get made, and then broken. Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. Let me tell you why…
As a deaf person, SU content is pretty much not accessible – I’ve spoken with past students, and they’ve said it’s the way it has always been. It’s taken me going backwards and forwards reminding them of things like subtitles on their media content (as well as reminding them to book interpreters for me) – and promises get made, and ultimately broken, again. This last one now has royally got my back up.
On the 30th of January, I went along to the Muslim Ban protest with Pulse TV to record some footage. Before this, we met in the offices. One of the volunteers said “Oh, we need to make sure we {air quotes} subtitle {end air quotes} this”. My friend was there and I could see what was going on… she was letting them know it was me they were discussing, as I was stood right next to him. Needless to say the conversation they were having ended pretty quickly at that point.
So – everything gets filmed (which I enjoyed), and they edit it together. It gets posted to Facebook in the Volunteers group, and the Media Officer reminds them within minutes that it needs to have the subtitles fixed. This is on the 2nd of February. We are now on the 6th, and it’s still not been fixed; despite them circulating the video everywhere.
Perhaps the Youtube subtitle got it right… “False Media”
This film was possibly going to be their NaSTA entry; which is even more important that they get everything right – at the moment, their entry discriminates against people that are deaf/hard of hearing or those that use English as a second language. I think NaSTA should know this.
I will keep on at them until they get it right. They have a long way to go.
This was their offending clip this time: