Mira Kainulainen

I'm currently working on my doctoral dissertation as a part of the Sarjis research group. The topic of my dissertation is comic documents as an instrument of improving accessibility and social participation. A comic document is a comic version of a text document.

Besides a doctoral researcher, I am a translator and an accessibility specialist. In spring 2022, I graduated as a translator from Tampere University with Finnish and English as my working languages. I specialise in accessibility, particularly audio description and, now, through my dissertation, accessible communication. I also work with Easy Finnish.

In the academic year 2024–2025, I am working in The Audio Description Handbook project funded by the Kone Foundation.

I am an English translator, and my specialisation is accessible communication and cognitive accessibility. My master's thesis concerned audio describing comics, and I have taught audio description in Tampere Region Center of Adult Education and at Tampere University.

I search for ways to develop the contents and creation process of comic documents to better answer user needs. My goal is to advance the use of comic documents in real-life contexts, further develop functional translation theory for intersemiotic translation and accumulate information about the characteristics and usability of comic documents from users' point of view.

On a larger scale, my research goal is to advance social change towards sustainability and social justice.

Comic documents, intersemiotic translation, accessible communication, comics, user-centredness, social participation, audio description, cognitive accessibility

Translation studies, sociology