Monika Szczygielska is a specialist in legal and practical aspects of accessibility and a communication specialist. She is Deputy-Chairman of the Board of Widzialni Foundation, an NGO specializing in websites’ and events accessibility that has joined ILSA as an associated partner. She is also cooperator of the Culture without Barriers Foundation, organizer of Week of Culture without Barriers and owner of Dostepni.eu – professional creators team specializing in media accessibility.
She provided sign language interpreting for the Polish President’s website and for the content library of the National Audiovisual Institute. Through Dostepni.eu she has pioneered live subtitling through respeaking in Poland with the first accessible political and social events in 2013 (in the venue and in live on-line streaming), the first interlingual live subtitling in 2015 and the first Polish television broadcast with live subtitling through respeaking in 2017. In 2015 she contributed to the research project “Respeaking – process, competences, quality”, led by Dr Agnieszka Szarkowska at the University of Warsaw, as a lecturer during workshops concerning practical aspects of respeaking in Poland. Together with Łukasz Dutka (University of Warsaw), she conducts respeaking quality research and training sessions.
Monika Szczygielska has experience in managing the organization of access services as well as whole events for people with sensorial disabilities. She’s the author of a number of publications, including “Dostępne multimedia” [“Accessible multimedia”] and “Dostępne wydarzenia w praktyce” [“Accessible events in practice”].
For the Polish Ministry of Digitalization and Administration, she authored an e-learning course in accessibility, in accordance with WCAG standards. She is a member of the Forum of Accessible Cyberspace and Wide Coalition in Aid of Digital Skills and she has experience in contributing to consultations on technical standards and legislation.
