Closed ASL Interpreting for Online Videos
This addresses accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing viewers in online media, but it is incremental as it builds on existing captioning and interpreter concepts.
The study tackled the problem of deaf and hard of hearing individuals struggling to access online videos by proposing a closed interpreting tool that allows adjustable interpreter overlays, aiming to assess user preferences and benefits of adjustability.
Deaf individuals face great challenges in today's society. It can be very difficult to be able to understand different forms of media without a sense of hearing. Many videos and movies found online today are not captioned, and even fewer have a supporting video with an interpreter. Also, even with a supporting interpreter video provided, information is still lost due to the inability to look at both the video and the interpreter simultaneously. To alleviate this issue, we came up with a tool called closed interpreting. Similar to closed captioning, it will be displayed with an online video and can be toggled on and off. However, the closed interpreter is also user-adjustable. Settings, such as interpreter size, transparency, and location, can be adjusted. Our goal with this study is to find out what deaf and hard of hearing viewers like about videos that come with interpreters, and whether the adjustability is beneficial.