Sarah McDonagh

Despite a shared interest in issues related to quality of life, accessibility and sustainability are not often thought of together. This has led to an absence of accessibility in conversations about sustainability, with governments and national authorities being slow to include people with disabilities in their climate mitigation planning and related decision-making. This chapter focuses on accessibility in the context of the environmental educational project GreenSCENT, offering an overview of the measures put in place to ensure broad inclusivity within the project. In doing so, it will shed light on how accessibility and universal design can and should be integrated into all Green Deal initiatives. Within this broad area of interest, particular attention is given to the development of an accessible communication plan and technological tools created as part of the project, such as the GreenVerse multimedia platform, as well as the GreenSCENT air quality and Citizen Journalism apps. Finally, I will conclude this chapter by proposing possible research avenues that advance issues of accessibility within the area of environmental research, which facilitate, rather than hinder, the transition towards a carbon-neutral society for a diverse range of people.

Mitigating the worst effects of climate change is the most pressing issue facing humanity today. In their recent report (2023), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscored the urgency of achieving a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2050, as per the terms of the Paris Agreement (2015). However, a concerning disparity exists between the aforementioned targets and the projected trajectory of global emissions, with current data suggesting the potential of a 10% increase in GHG emissions before 2030 (IPCC, 2023). In response to the increasing urgency of the climate crisis, governments have recalibrated their national priorities to meet the GHG emissions targets as set out in the Paris Agreement. This recalibration has manifested in several key areas, including the economy and finance, energy, as well as in social and environmental policy. Environmental concerns are increasingly integrated into economic and development planning, with governments allocating more resources towards renewables and sustainable development initiatives to phase out fossil fuels. Global cooperation on climate change mitigation and adaptation has also intensified with international treaties, like the Paris Agreement, serving as a catalyst for new partnerships and agreements between countries to cut emissions and provide financial support for countries who are or will be most affected by the effects of climate change (e.g. the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund). However, the pace and rate of these changes vary significantly across regions. While developed countries have more resources to implement more ambitious climate targets, developing countries face the challenge of balancing economic growth with environmental safeguards.

There is growing recognition of Media Accessibility as an educational asset in the classroom. More specifically, recent research has demonstrated its potential as a didactic tool for foreign language learning (Bausells-Espín in J Audiovis Transl 5(2):152–75, 2022; Talaván in Int J English Stud 19:21–40, 2019) and developing students’ speaking, intercultural and digital literacy skills (Khanlou et al. in J Dev Phys Dis 33:1–25, 2021). In this chapter, we will focus on the creation of non-professional audio description (AD) by secondary students as part of a workshop carried out at Ítaca campus in Barcelona, Spain. During the workshops, students were asked to design and create an accessible, immersive story using the GreenVerse platform, developed as part of the GreenSCENT project (Smart Citizen Engagement for a Green Future, Nº 101036480). We begin this chapter locating this research within the growing body of work on the use of Media Accessibility as a pedagogical tool (Black in J Audiovis Transl 5:73–93, 2022; Herrero and Escobar in Transl Translanguaging Multilingual Contexts 4:30–54, 2018; Talaván in Int J Engl Stud 19:21–40, 2019), arguing the case for its integration in the classroom. We will then present the workshop methodology, followed by an analysis and comparison of the AD created by students. This analysis will assess where and how the AD aligns with or deviates from established guidelines and best practices, specifically following the ADLAB project recommendations (Remael et al. in ADLAB audio description guidelines, 2014) for English and the UNE 153020 Standard (AENOR, 2005) for Spanish. Our results show that students deviated from established guidelines in the areas of content selection, with students more prone to include evaluative statements in their ADs, owing to the purpose of the task at hand and students’ unfamiliarity with AD norms and conventions.

Access to clear and scientifically verified information is crucial to understand the scale of the challenge of the climate crisis, allowing policymakers, governments, and individuals to better respond to it. However, for some, including people with cognitive disabilities as well as individuals who have difficulty reading, climate science can be difficult to understand with complex sentence structures and jargon obscuring important environmental information. The aim of this paper is to assess the main linguistic barriers to information about the climate crisis for people with cognitive disabilities and reading difficulties. Using the examples of the Greater London Authority’s Environment Strategy Executive Report and the Northern Ireland Executive Discussion Document on a Northern Ireland Climate Change Bill, and their adaptations into Easy-to-Read as our corpus, we will examine the different morphosyntactic and lexical elements of each text to determine their overall level of complexity, such as sentence structure or vocabulary. Our results show that both Easy-to-Read versions were generally easier to understand than the standard versions. However, the Northern Ireland Easy-to-Read text was more syntactically complex with longer and more complicated sentence structures, owing to its function as a consultation document. We conclude that the main access barriers in the Northern Ireland Easy-to-Read text are related to its morphosyntactic elements, a conclusion supported by our manual analysis of the standard text. More generally, the lexical aspects of both Easy-to-Read texts showed positive results, which suggests that they may be more easily simplified compared to morphosyntactic aspects. However, more systemic and contrastive research is required to confirm our findings, in addition to user testing with people with cognitive disabilities and individuals who have difficulty reading.