Education is a fundamental human right, however unfortunately not everybody has the same learning opportunities. For instance, if a student has hearing impairments, s/he could face communications barriers in the classroom, which could affect his/her learning process. APEINTA is a Spanish educational project that aims for inclusive education for all. This project proposes two main accessible initiatives: (1) real-time captioning and text-to-speech (TTS) services in the classroom and (2) accessible Web-learning platform out of the classroom with accessible digital resources. This paper presents the inclusive initiatives of APEINTA. Also an evaluation of the intothe-classroom initiative (real-time captioning and TTS services) is presented. This evaluation has been conducted during a regular undergraduate course at a university and during a seminar at an integration school for deaf children. Forty-five hearing students, 1 foreign student, 3 experts in captioning, usability and accessibility, and 20 students with hearing impairments evaluated these services in the classroom. Evaluation results show that these initiatives are adequate to be used in the classroom and that students are satisfied with them.

Captioning is the process of transcribing speech and acoustical information into text to help deaf and hard of hearing people accessing to the auditory track of audiovisual media. In addition to the verbal transcription, it includes information such as sound effects, speaker identification, or music tagging. However, it just takes into account a limited spectrum of the whole acoustic information available in the soundtrack, and hence, an important amount of emotional information is lost when attending just to the normative compliant captions. In this article, it is shown, by means of behavioral and EEG measurements, how emotional information related to sounds and music used by the creator in the audiovisual work is perceived differently by normal hearing group and hearing disabled group when applying standard captioning. Audio and captions activate similar processing areas, respectively, in each group, although not with the same intensity. Moreover, captions require higher activation of voluntary attentional circuits, as well as language-related areas. Captions transcribing musical information increase attentional activity, instead of emotional processing.

Standard captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing people cannot transmit the emotional information that music provides in support of the narrative in audiovisual media. We explore an alternative method using vibrotactile stimulation as a possible channel to transmit the emotional information contained in an audiovisual soundtrack and, thus, elicit a greater emotional reaction in hearing-impaired people. To achieve this objective, we applied two one-minute videos that were based on image sequences that were unassociated with dramatic action, maximizing the effect of the music and vibrotactile stimuli. While viewing the video, using EEG we recorded the brain activity of 9 female participants with normal hearing, and 7 female participants with very severe and profound hearing loss. The results show that the same brain areas are activated in participants with normal hearing watching the video with the soundtrack, and in participants with hearing loss watching the same video with a soft and rhythmic vibrotactile stimulation on the palm and fingertips, although in different hemispheres. These brain areas (auditory cortex, superior temporal cortex, medial frontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal pole and Insula) have been consistently reported as areas involved in the emotional perception of music. We conclude that vibrotactile stimuli can generate cortex activation while watching audiovisual media in a similar way to sound. Thus, a further in-depth study of the possibilities of these stimuli can contribute to an alternative subtitling channel for enriching the audiovisual experience of hearing-impaired people.

Abstract. This paper presents evaluation results of the user's satisfaction using the APEINTA project which main aim is to provide accessibility in education, in and out of the classroom. APEINTA is the Spanish acronym for "Aiming for an Inclusive Education based on Assistive Technology". The APEINTA project is focused in two main inclusive proposals: first, it deals with eliminating hard of hearing students' communication barriers in the classroom, providing them automatic real-time captioning and other mechanisms for making easy the communication with the teacher and others students; and second, it deals also in providing an accessible Web learning platform with accessible digital resources, so every student can access them in and out of the classroom.