Peter Looms has more than 30 years’ experience working in broadcasting and new media. Until March 2011, he was senior consultant at the public service broadcaster DR (Danish Broadcasting) with a brief to expand international collaboration in new media and accessibility.  He is currently chairman of the ITU-T Focus Group that has been asked to prepare a roadmap of actions on the accessibility of audiovisual media by the end of 2012.

 

While at DR, he was the Danish coordinator of DR’s contribution to the EU policy support programme project DTV4ALL that assisted the European Commission with its work to promote the take-up of access services for digital TV in 30 European countries.

 

Since 2007 he has been changing the focus of his activities from broadcasting and new media to working as an independent consultant and teaching at universities in China, Denmark, Hong Kong and Mexico. 

 

He has worked for the EU MEDIA programme as an evaluator and was trainer on two MEDIA training program initiatives coordinated by INA, France.

 

Currently Peter is involved as consultant for the national digital TV switchover in Portugal and on the development of national accessibility guidelines for digital TV in Ireland. 

 

Following work on DTV4ALL for the European Commission, the UN agency the International  Telecommunications Union and G3ict commissioned Looms to write a report entitled Making Television Accessible. This was published in December, 2011 and is available in electronic form here: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/sis/PwDs/Documents/Making_TV_Accessible-E-BAT.pdf

 

 

Dr Pilar Orero experience in organising training activities dates from 1999 when she started the first MA in Audiovisual Translation in Europe. This face to face MA is still running. http://www.fti.uab.es/pg.audiovisual/es/presentacion.html

 

In 2003 she started the first online PG programme on Audiovisual Translation (AVT), which she still directs and is now in its 8th edition, http://metav.uab.cat/acc/.

 

Within the PG environment several courses are on offer, such as the Diploma on AVT, Diploma on Media Accessibility and full Masters in both AVT and Media Accessibility. She also designed, created and directed for the first two editions the PhD Summer School at the Department of Translation at UAB http://jornades.uab.cat/escola_doctorat/en

 

She is now the Research Coordinator at CAIAC where research training activities are also organised http://centresderecerca.uab.cat/caiac/en/content/phd

 

As part of the international research group TransMedia, she has been organising their biannual conferences where day-long training workshops are organised, the most recent in 2011 at Imperial College, London:
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/translationgroup/mediaforall4/workshops.html

 

Pilar Orero has been working on the Standardisation Committee of Digital TV and Media Accessibility in Spain for AENOR. She is the joint coordinator of Working Group B (Audio Description and Audio Subtitles) of the ITU Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility.

 

She has taken part in many research projects with EU broadcasters such as BBC [UK], DR [Denmark], RBB [Germany], TVC [Catalonia], TVE [Spain] and has close links with the Media production industry in Spain. This connection is due to her position as the director of studies of an MA programme and looking for working placements for the MA students.

 

She also has a close connection to many subtitling and audio description EU companies, and Film Festival organisers, since she has been advising on accessibility.

 

Pilar Orero is in contact with all Audiovisual Translation professional associations in Spain, and she is founding member of ATRAE, the Spanish association for the translation of media content.

 

 

Dr. Takebumi ITAGAKI is lecturer in Electronic & Computer Engineering at the School of Engineering & Design of Brunel University, UK.

 

Dr.  Itagaki obtained a BEng from Waseda University (Japan) in 1990 and a PhD in Engineering/Music from University of Durham in 1998. In 2000, he moved to Brunel University as a Lecturer in Engineering.

 

He contributed towards the following EU-IST FP5 research projects: SAMBITS, 3D MURALE, CISMUNDUS, and CONFLUENT. He was the prime contractor and administrative co-ordinator of: SAVANT Project, and was the project manager of IST FP6 Integrated Project INSTINCT.

 

In the context of media accessibility, Dr. Itagaki has project coordinator of the EU PSP project DTV4ALL and has extensive knowledge of the technical aspects of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) and Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB) families of digital television standards.