Joshua Branson is a PhD student at the Universidade de Vigo (Spain), where his research focuses on the exploration of accessible filmmaking in practice and the role of director of accessibility. He holds a BA in European Studies and Modern Languages (Spanish and Italian) from the University of Bath (UK) and an MA in Audiovisual Translation from the University of Roehampton (London, UK).
He was awarded a Special Commendation from the Institute of Translation and Interpreting in the Best Academic Research category for his MA dissertation on standard and collaborative approaches to media accessibility, and he has presented papers on accessible filmmaking at conferences in Poland, Spain and the UK. Besides accessible filmmaking, his research interests include eye tracking, integrated titles and the inclusion of sensory-impaired viewers in the filmmaking process.
He has worked as a director of accessibility on two short films, The Progression of Love (Rodgers, UK, 2010) and Acquario (Puntoni, Italy, 2018), and he will assume the role throughout the production of Chaplin (Spinney & Middleton, UK, 2019), a feature-length film about Charlie Chaplin, as part of his PhD. Alongside his academic research, he also works as a subtitler, translating from Italian into English and subtitling English-language films for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
