Impacts on quality: Enjoyment factors in blind and low vision audience entertainment ratings: A qualitative study.

Mala D Naraine,Deborah I Fels,Margot Whitfield,Minlie Huang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208165

Abstract

Audio description (AD) is one of the main methods that people who are blind or low vision (B/LV) use to access film, television, and theatre content. AD is a second audio track inserted into the space(s) where speech is absent, which tends to be only a few seconds. Contained in that second track is an audio description of the important visual information contained within a specific scene. However, as there is insufficient time to describe all visual information, decisions about what is important to describe and how to present that information (style) to optimize a B/LV viewer’s entertainment experience are required. Most research to date has considered only short-term, single-episode experiences to gauge viewers’ reactions to the AD content. In addition, this research typically has used a monotone, single style of audio description, which is defined as “the conventional style” in this paper. We use an integrative style instead, that is defined as ‘AD designed to fit a specific show”, and differed between shows. We carried out a within-subjects longitudinal study with eight episodes of a dark comedy, using different description styles and describers in order to assess viewer engagement and preferences for AD describer style, language use, timing, and fit to the show. Twenty-four blind participants viewed and rated all eight episodes. Major findings included that most participants found the integrative style entertaining, a fit with the specific episodes, and enjoyable. Some participants, however, preferred the conventional style and struggled with the language and topic of a dark comedy and its associated descriptions.

Highlights

Blind and low vision (B/LV) children and adults of all nationalities continue to experience barriers to accessing many of their own cultural artefacts, due to the lack of access to audio description (AD), a secondary sound track produced to provide description of important visual elements of media content for people who cannot see [1, 2]
Blind and low vision Canadians from Toronto were recruited to participate in a study on AD where the integrated model approach [2] to AD was employed for Death Comes to Town
Death Comes to Town is, for most participants, their first exposure to the integrative style approach to AD [18]

Summary

Introduction

Blind and low vision (B/LV) children and adults of all nationalities continue to experience barriers to accessing many of their own cultural artefacts, due to the lack of access to audio description (AD), a secondary sound track produced to provide description of important visual elements of media content for people who cannot see [1, 2]. May consider comparable access from a Enjoyment factors in blind and low vision audience entertainment ratings technical point of view such as providing only the raw data or facts of the visuals and the B/LV must interpret that . Lopez et al, [21], further contends that issues of accessibility should be incorporated into film and television to facilitate an audio track that is represents the creative vision which could be made available to all audiences They argue that “the diversity of preferences by visually impaired people cannot be reduced to one accessibility method, but on the contrary requires a user-centred personalised method that allows audiences to make choices on access strategies” The fundamental objective of AD, through the delivery style or method of the access strategy, is to allow B/LV audiences to have a comparable entertaining experience

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Results

Conclusion