The beginning of 2021 will bring a lot of interesting activities to tune in online! The MeMAD project will host three webinars to present the final results and findings of the project. The MeMAD presence will begin by co-hosting an event on Accessibility with the Goethe-Institut Finnland as a part of Night of Science today!
The Night of Science
In the Night of Science, January 14th, 2021, MeMAD will be partnering with Goethe-Institut Finnland on the Night of Science with a panel discussion titled Making Media Accessible – Developing tools for audio-visual data in the MeMad-project
In this panel discussion, Associate Professor Mikko Kurimo (Aalto University), Professor Jörg Tiedemann (University of Helsinki), Dr Tiina Tuominen (Yleisradio), Solution Architect Tiina Lindh-Knuutila (Lingsoft Language Services Oy), Head of Access Services Minna Pöntys (Yleisradio) and Audio Description Educator Eija-Liisa Markkula (head of the audio description committee of the Cultural Service for the Visually Impaired in Finland) will discuss media accessibility from a technological perspective, including current technologies, unsolved problems and potential developments centering around these questions:
“We rely on audio-visual media for entertainment and information but what if you could not access that media due to restrictions in hearing or sight, or language barriers? Can technology help by transforming speech into writing, visuals into language and by translating languages?“
MeMAD Webinars – the three perspectives
All webinars are open for everyone and admittance is free. The language of the webinars will be English and closed captioning in English will be provided. The webinars will also be recorded and made available with subtitles after broadcast.
January 19, 2021 – Making Content Available for All: An Accessibility Perspective
In the first webinar, the results of the MeMAD project are presented, in particular when it comes to subtitling and content localisation in the form of translated subtitles.
We look to the future with our keynote speaker, Konstantin Dranch, and with lightning round talks and open discussion on future development areas to make content truly accessible for everyone.
January 26, 2021 – On Human-driven AI Solutions to Access and Manage Audiovisual Content: A Research Perspective
In the second webinar, we present the results of the MeMAD project for multimodal media description, and show how human work can be done effectively with state-of-the-art tools.
February 2, 2021 – Industrialising Media Production: A Producer’s Perspective
The webinar series will conclude by presenting the producer’s perspective. In this webinar, we look at the MeMAD project results from the angle of media production process through real-life customer case studies. We look to the future with our keynote speaker, Sandy McIntyre, and with Olivier Struyven, who moderates a discussion on future work and developments within the field of media production.