Advances in technology have led to the availability of consumer Head Mounted Displays and the availability of 360° cameras for capturing immersive content. This has enabled broadcasters to explore new experiences, where narrative and content can be delivered with a heightened sense of presence and engagement, regardless of whether the user is fully immersed, using multiple screens, or via traditional television. Exploitation of these technologies is still in its infancy and innovators are producing ground-breaking content for early adopters. With any new technology it is essential to consider accessibility especially in Europe, where e-inclusion is a priority of the EC and the Single Digital Market. Doing so ensures that the narrative is coherent across languages, ages and abilities, and ensures compliance with regulatory guidelines. The goal of Immersive Accessibility (ImAc) is to explore how accessibility services can be integrated with immersive media. It is not acceptable that accessibility is regarded as an afterthought: rather it should be considered throughout the design, production and delivery process. ImAc will explore new deployment methods for these services (Subtitles, Audio Description, Audio Subtitling, Sign Language) in immersive environments. We will move away from the constraints of the current technology, into a Hyper-Personalized environment where the consumer can fully customize the experience to meet his personal needs. For example, it may be more appropriate for subtitles to be read out-loud or the Audio Description presented as text. The key action in ImAc will be to ensure immersive experiences are inclusive across different languages, addressing the needs of those with hearing and low vision problems, learning difficulties and the aged. We also foresee these services consumed by a wider audience, for personal convenience, learning language and language therapy - accessible content can add significant value to these related areas.

Media Literacy is broadly considered a crucial skill for citizens to critically navigate information sources , be they shared online, on social media or through other channels. Yet current initiatives to promote media literacy have not yet delivered sufficient action to bring about the systemic change necessary. Educators must be adequately equipped to teach media literacy to turn their students into conscious and critical citizens. “Watching Videos Like a Historian” will radically increase the number of well-informed, media literate young citizens. The project delivers ways of teaching history and citizenship with trustworthy audiovisual (AV) heritage resources from broadcasters and archives that engage students across the EU to critically reflect on the past.The project unites local history and citizenship educators and AV collection holders to develop, implement and evaluate tailored educational solutions that are aligned in their local educational contexts, and can be scaled up easily. This is done through: (1) research on functional and didactical requirements, (2) development of tools and integration in existing platforms (3) capacity building of educators and AV collection holders and (4) ignite an awareness campaign on the value of media literacy through historic and civics lenses. Through these actions, all educators in Europe will have free access to new research and resources that they can use to promote media literacy, and at least 1.000 educators will have gained the capacity to use AV material in a profoundly impactful way. The partners will have gained new insights which will enable them to reach and support more teachers in the future. Three European NGOs in the core consortium - EuroClio, the Europeana Foundation and the EUscreen Foundation will align their strategic planning with the outcomes of this project. This partnership represents over 40,000 educators and 50 AV collection holders and provides access to over 50 million objects.

One of the many challenges people with various degrees of disabilities face (visually or hearing impaired) is their inability and difficulty to access mainstream products and services thus being excluded from enjoying audio-visual services on an equal basis as people without disabilities. Marginalising people with disabilities on this level is a critical and problematic issue, especially in today’s “Information Society”, where access to information should be freely available to all, in order for each individual to be able to reach his/her maximum potential, personally, professionally and socially. While these challenges have been identified, they have not been addressed yet efficiently since existing solutions still inherit characteristics of the analogue TV or just focus on traditional TV viewing. In this context, the EasyTV system aims not only to ease the access to multimedia services, by offering novel media delivery mechanisms but also to move one step further, by enhancing interaction based on a multi-language approach, and adapt it to the user’s preferences providing personalised content in a integrated single multiterminal platform. Specifically EasyTV will be based on four pillars: a) Improved access services for enhanced multimedia visual and sound experience for people with disabilities. b) Improved personalisation of the content experiencing and interaction, towards a hyper-personalised experience to all. c) Novel technologies to break the sign language barrier (based on crowdsourcing techniques). d) Improvement and development of voice and gesture/gaze recognition to control the TV set and TV applications (e.g., eye movement or head movement) in the form of a universal remote control. Different testing with users will establish a close cooperation by exchanging experiences among the different partners and user groups, in order to enhance the whole evaluation and validation process of the EasyTV technology