“Swept to the sidelines and forgotten“: Cultural Exclusion, Blind Persons’ Participation, and International Film Festivals

Authors

  • Isabel Pedersen Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media, and Culture, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
  • Kristen Aspevig Ryerson University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v3i3.172

Keywords:

Accessibility, blind persons, film festivals, audio description, low-visioned persons

Abstract

International film festivals are privileged sites for cultural exchange and creative incubation to which blind persons are effectively excluded, a barrier that needs addressing. By recognizing barriers to film festivals, we instigate a solution to making film culture more accessible to blind persons. Using the film Blindsight as an exemplar along with a study conducted on film festivals, this paper argues a triadic thesis: that the issues of blind audience members at film festivals, blind subjects in films, and blind filmmakers must be viewed together in order to attend to cultural inclusion. We situate the paper in the domain of autobiography theory and specifically draw upon G. Thomas Couser’s work Signifying Bodies for a model. Couser attends to self-representation thereby enabling us to focalize the research on agency at various subject positions in the acts of participating in film culture.

Author Biographies

Isabel Pedersen, Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media, and Culture, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Dr. Isabel Pedersen is Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media, and Culture at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa. Her published work concerning culture and accessibility, autobiography, identity, culture, and digital media, appears in various journals including Wascana Review, Canadian Journal of Communication, Biography, Social Semiotics, and Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.

Kristen Aspevig, Ryerson University

Dr. Kristen Aspevig has taught in the Arts and Contemporary Studies Program at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has worked as a Research Associate at the Diversity Institute at Ryerson, and recently published authored articles on accessibility and design thinking in the Canadian Journal of Communication and The International Journal of Arts in Society.

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How to Cite

Pedersen, I., & Aspevig, K. (2014). “Swept to the sidelines and forgotten“: Cultural Exclusion, Blind Persons’ Participation, and International Film Festivals. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 3(3), 29–52. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v3i3.172

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 3 (2014)

Section

Articles

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