The most recent amendment to the Spanish Law of Education highlights the importance of task-based projects and active learning methodologies to ensure the quality and accountability of the state system. As regards second and foreign language learning, there is a series of competences whose development is mandatory and could be achieved much more proficiently through the introduction of translation and accessibility services. In fact, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a binding legal document issued by the UN and ratified by Spain a decade ago, clearly recognises accessibility to be a human right about which all citizens should be made aware. The existence of norms and regulations, both national and international, requires that students and educators become competent in their use as well as active in their enforcement and promotion. It is the aim of this paper to present the ameliorating effects of the introduction of two accessibility services –subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description for the blind and short-sighted– in the English subject of a secondary school in the north-west of Spain. By following normative (UNE 153010, 2012) and specialised academic texts (Lorenzo & Pereira, 2012; Lorenzo, 2010; Maszerowska, Matamala & Orero, 2014), the authors of the present study managed to increase student motivation and engagement combining audiovisual translation tasks with other everyday activities. Participants became skilled in the new techniques in a relatively short period of time, understood the advantages of producing accessible media and devoted a considerable portion of their free time to the completion of suggested additional projects. As revealed in the data analysis, intersemiotic transformations seem to be a powerful tool for competence enhancement.