Media and Education for All: Bridging Female Academic Leaders and Society towards Impactful Results


Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Session 229

Monday, 7 July 2025 in 20 days 17:00–17:45 (UTC+02:00) Physical (on-site) and Virtual (remote) participation Room F, Palexpo Media Interactive Session
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Physical (on-site) and Virtual (remote) participation


This session will explore some recent research projects related to media and education which contribute to the WSIS vision to build people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented information and knowledge societies. The session will feature contributions from members of the AccessCat network and it will be chaired by Dr. Anita Lamprecht, an international lawyer at the intersection of governance, law and technology currently co-leading the AI Apprenticeship programme at DiploFoundation. Projects and speakers include:
 
·      Prof. Anna Matamala (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), presenting the results of ENACT, which is exploring how broadcasters can create Easy News that enhance access to information to persons with lower literacy skills or lower proficiency in a language, such as persons with intellectual disabilities or migrants and refugees learning a new language.
 
·      Prof. Pilar Orero (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), reporting on the results of the MOSAIC project, which aims to enhance accessibility services with Artificial Intelligence, catering for the needs of diverse users.
 
·      Dr Estel·la Oncins (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), exploring the use of Virtual Reality to enhance inclusivity in the classroom through the results of the InclusiVRity project.
 
·      Dr Mireia Farrús (Universitat de Barcelona), presenting SCRIBAL, a tool to facilitate automatic subtitling in educational contexts for minority languages.
 
·      Dr Mar Gutiérrez-Colón (Universitat Rovira Virgili), focusing on accessibility and language learning through academia-industry collaborations that enhance English language learning for persons with intellectual disabilities.
 
After a brief introduction by Dr. Anita Lamprecht, each speaker will have 8 minutes to give a presentation. A 10-minute Q&A session will follow. The session will last a total of 60 minutes and will allow to see impactful investigations led by women towards an accessible and inclusive information society where the coordination of industry and academic stakeholders is fundamental.

Panellists
Dr. Anita Lamprecht
Dr. Anita Lamprecht Consultant DiploFoundation (Switzerland) Moderator

 Dr Anita Lamprecht is an international lawyer at the intersection of governance, law, and technology. With a background in international litigation, she focuses on the legal and policy dimensions of digital transformation. Her expertise spans AI, digital twins, internet governance, the metaverse, emerging technologies, and futures literacy. At DiploFoundation, Anita co-leads the AI Apprenticeship programme, supports capacity-building for international organisations, and contributes to global digital policy. Her work bridges law, innovation, and institutional practice, focusing on inclusion and life-centred technology. She actively promotes Diplo’s humAInism approach, which advocates transparent, responsible, and life-centred use of AI. As a woman in tech and law, Anita brings an intersectional perspective to education, equity, and leadership.


Prof. Anna Matamala
Prof. Anna Matamala Full Professor Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), AccessCat Director Remote Panellist

Anna Matamala, BA in Translation (UAB) and PhD in Applied Linguistics (UPF, Barcelona), is a Full Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Prof. Matamala is the leader of Transmedia Catalonia research group and director of AccessCat Network. She has published extensively in the field of audiovisual translation and media accessibility, and has led and taken part in many funded projects. MAP platform co-creator. LAB-TTAV director since 2017.  Accessibility expert at ANEC. Joan Coromines Prize in 2005, APOSTA Award to Young Researchers in 2011, Dr. Margaret R. Pfanstiehl Memorial Achievement Award in Audio Description Research and Development 2021. More information: webs.uab.cat/amatamala


Prof. Pilar Orero
Prof. Pilar Orero Full Professor Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)

PhD (UMIST, UK) works at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) in the TransMedia Catalonia Lab. She has written and edited many books, near 100 academic papers and almost the same number of book chapters --all on Media Accessibility. Leader and participant of numerous EU funded research projects. She works in standardisation. She has been working on Immersive Accessibility for the past 6 years first in a project called ImAc, which results are now further developed in TRACTION, MEDIAVERSE, MILE, and GREENSCENT. She led until December 2022 the EU network LEADME on Media Accessibility. She was the Co-Chair of Study Group on Accessibility and Inclusion in the ITU Metaverse Focus Group, and she is leading the Digital Inclusion and Accessibility track of the ITU Virtual Worlds. She is now working on AI and accessibility in the three funded projects MOSAIC, ALFIE, and SPICE. For more info please go to: https://webs.uab.cat/pilarorero/ 

 


Dr. Estel·la Oncins
Dr. Estel·la Oncins Associate Professor Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)

Estella Oncins, PhD (UAB, Spain), is a lecturer at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Coordinator of the MA in Audiovisual Translation. She is a senior member of the TransMedia Catalonia research group, her work focuses on digital and media accessibility, including immersive environments. She has participated in multiple EU-funded projects on accessibility. In 2024, she received the WSIS2024 award in ICT applications in E-learning for the project YoungArcHers. She actively contributes to digital and media accessibility committees within UNE, ITU, and ISO and was involved in the XAUR (W3C). Currently, she works on VR/AR accessibility in the InclusiVRity and IMMERSE projects and explores AI and accessibility in MOSAIC and ALFIE.


Dr. Mireia Farrús
Dr. Mireia Farrús Associate Professor Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)

Mireia Farrús is an Associate Professor at the Language of Computation Centre at the Universitat de Barcelona. She graduated in Physics and in Linguistics and she received her PhD in Signal Theory and Communications from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, in 2008. She held a research position at DFKI (Germany), and she has been a visiting researcher at the University of Umeå (Sweden), the University of Canberra (Australia), the University of Edinburgh (UK), and Columbia University (NY, USA). Her main research has been focused on speech technologies within the area of biometrics and security, machine translation, prosody modelling, and pathology detection in the clinical domain, publishing over 100 papers and participating in 25 competitive and 11 industrial projects.

 

 


Dr. Mar Gutiérrez-Colón
Dr. Mar Gutiérrez-Colón Associate Professor Rovira i Virgili University (URV), Spain

Dr. Mar Gutiérrez-Colón is an associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics in the Department of English and German Studies, at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Tarragona, Spain. She holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition (2002) She is the Coordinator of the  of the Research Group in Language and Technology (a consolidated group, recognised and awarded with budget by AGAUR-2023). https://www.relate.recerca.urv.cat/ca/

She has led and participated in research projects on the use of new technologies in language acquisition and distance learning (computer assisted language learning and mobile learning) as well as in the accessibility field. 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8479-4933

 

 


Topics
Artificial Intelligence Capacity Building Cultural Diversity Digital Divide Digital Inclusion Education Human Rights Media Smart Cities
WSIS Action Lines
  • AL C3 logo C3. Access to information and knowledge
  • AL C4 logo C4. Capacity building
  • AL C7 E–LEA logo C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-learning
  • AL C8 logo C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
  • AL C9 logo C9. Media

The session will include presentations linked to Access to Information and Knowledge (C3). More specifically, it will deal with easy news (C9, Media), AI-enabled access services in media (C9), VR as a tool to enhance inclusivity in the classroom (C7), automatic subtitling tools in educational contexts for minority languages (C7 and C8, linguistic diversity), as well as accessibility and language learning for persons with intellectual disabilities (C7). 

Sustainable Development Goals
  • Goal 4 logo Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
  • Goal 5 logo Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
  • Goal 11 logo Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
  • Goal 16 logo Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

The tools, resources and experiences presented in the session will make cities more inclusive (Goal 11), promoting inclusive societies (Goal 16). More specifically, the tools used in educational contexts will contribute to Goal 4. This session features only women to highlight the empower all women and girls (Goal 5).