Design Proposal for Sign Language Services in TV Broadcasting from the Perspective of People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Abstract

Sign language services are provided so that people with hearing loss are not alienated from socially and politically important information through TV broadcasting. In this paper, we conducted a user survey and evaluation of the current sign language services for deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) people, and solutions were proposed for the problems found in the course of the analyses. To this end, a total of five stages of research were conducted. First, the communication problems experienced by DHH individuals and previous studies on their language and information acquisition were investigated. Second, the most typical types of information delivery channels via TV were defined as news, discussions, and weather reports, and by investigating the actual sign language service cases for each type, three visual information delivery elements were identified: sign language interpreters, reference videos, and subtitles. Third, a preference survey, an interview survey, and an eye tracker experiment on the DHH participants were conducted with varying arrangement options of information delivery elements. Fourth, based on the results of the investigations and experiments, the options to be considered when arranging information delivery elements were compiled. The results showed that the sign language interpreter, which is the first element of information delivery, should be presented in a size clearly visible because the visibility of their facial expressions is important. In addition, it is recommended to present the interpreter without a background since DHH participants did not prefer the presence of a background. As for subtitles, which is the third element of information delivery, it was confirmed that the provision of sign language interpretation and subtitles together helped DHH participants to understand the contents more quickly and accurately. Moreover, if there are multiple speakers, individual subtitles for each speaker should be provided so that the viewers can understand who is talking. Reference videos, which are mainly placed on the screen background, the second information delivery element, were considered less important to DHH participants compared to sign language interpreters and subtitles, and it was found that DHH participants preferred reference videos to be visually separated from sign language interpreters. Fifth, based on the overall results of the study, a screen layout design was proposed for each type of information delivery element for DHH people. Contrary to the general conception that there would be no problem in viewing information-delivering TV broadcasts by DHH people simply by placing a sign language interpreter on the screen, the results of this study confirmed that a more delicate screen layout design is necessary for DHH people. It is expected that this study will serve as a helpful guide in providing better sign language services for TV broadcasts that can be conveniently viewed by both DHH and non-disabled people.