“Visual Translation and the Amazing Broken Telephone Kaleidoscope”: A Dialogue

Kat Germain considers media accessibility strategies while translating signed music by Deaf artists, drawing on her experience as a visual translator/interpreter and audio describer for Blind and partially sighted audience members. Germain queries: What is the disparity between a Deaf artist’s (nonvocal) work and a Blind audience member’s experience of it? When does visual translation stop being a copy, and when does it become a work of art in its own right if the audience member’s only experience is the audible translation, an unavoidably a creative act? Along with Germain, the panel (Deaf scholar/artist, Blind scholar/creator/audience member, and a sound engineer) discusses aspects of ethics and aesthetics of accessibility in the arts.