Representing visual content of movie cartoons through narration for the visually impaired

Abstract

Visual impairment is a consequence functional loss of vision which includes partially sighted low vision, legally blind and totally blind. To watch a movie is a challenge for the sight impaired people because most of the scenes are not verbally described in order to understand and have a full view of the program content. Due to this, it narrows down the opportunity of the sight impaired to access interactive learning in order to acquire knowledge and skills for independent learning. This paper presents the use of narration i.e., through spoken words and language in order to represent the visual content of chosen movie cartoons. To represent the visual content, an audio video description has been developed. Two cartoon movies were chosen. A user acceptance test was also conducted with two types of user groups. One group consists of 16 sighted students who were blindfolded to mimic the condition of visual impaired while the other group consists of 6 visual impaired adults. A set of questionnaire on the usability of the audio video description was distributed to the first users once they have completed reviewing the 2 movies. While the second group, was interviewed using the questionnaire as guide. Then, the 2 movies with audio descriptions were reviewed by 8 visually impaired children. Results have shown that the use of narration for audio video description can potentially be an avenue for the visually impaired to enjoy and experience a movie. The audio video description gradually can eliminate the dependence of the sight impaired individuals to their sighted companion who explains enough parts of the movie to them. Finally, the narrated audio video description will be another avenue for the sight impaired to access information through the use of multimedia.