Conference presentation
OA Policy
English

A proposal for the Integration of Easy Language and Sign Language into University Websites

Presented at11th EST Congress 2025, The Changing Faces of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Leeds (United Kingdom), 30 June - 3 July 2025
Presentation date2025-06-01
Abstract

University websites are a major source of information not only for the academic world but also for society at large. They are used to display, amongst others, academic programs, news or outreach activities. Therefore, it seems crucial for these websites to be accessible for all, so as not to exclude people with diverse capabilities from accessing information and services (Campoverde-Molina et al. 2023; Henry 2019). Prior work shows, however, that this is rarely the case (Kurt, 2019; Seale et al., 2019). More specifically, the inclusion of Easy Language (EL) can be instrumental for the access of information to some groups of people due to permanent, temporal or acquired reading and understanding difficulties, such as individuals with cognitive disorders, older adults or second language learners (Hansen-Schirra et al. 2020). Likewise, sign language (SL) videos also offer an alternative way of presenting information that could be vital for deaf people navigating the web (Fajardo et al. 2010; Yeratziotis et al. 2018; 2023). Despite the abovesaid, previous studies have shown that the inclusion of EL and SL content is not still widespread practice in the websites of higher academic institutions (Torres-del-Rey et al. 2023; David et al. 2023). Our project aimed at addressing this gap by investigating how EL and SL could be successfully integrated into university websites. Through the design of a translation pipeline involving different key agents -from content creators; EL, SL and web accessibility experts; to target groups-, we produced alternative versions of a set of Swiss-French university webpages that provide not only an EL version but also interactive SL videos. In the present paper, we will present the design and implementation of the aforementioned pipeline, the results of the first reception studies conducted with target users, as well as the constraints that were found along this action-research process.

Keywords
  • Easy Language
  • Sign Language
  • University Websites
Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
STRASLY, Irene et al. A proposal for the Integration of Easy Language and Sign Language into University Websites. In: 11th EST Congress 2025. Leeds (United Kingdom). 2025.
Main files (1)
Presentation
Secondary files (1)
Identifiers
  • PID : unige:187873
63views
26downloads

Technical informations

Creation25/09/2025 02:53:23
First validation26/09/2025 07:16:49
Update time13/10/2025 11:15:09
Status update26/09/2025 07:16:49
Last indexation14/11/2025 13:25:33
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack