‘Did You See That!?’ Enhancing the Experience of Sports Media Broadcast for Blind People

Abstract

Accessibility in sports media broadcast (SMB) remains a problem for blind spectators who wish to socialize and watch sports with friends and family. Although popular, radio's reliance on low bandwidth speech results in an overwhelming experience for blind spectators. In this paper we focused on two core issues: (i) how SMB can be augmented to convey diegetic information more effectively, and (ii) the social context in which SMB are consumed. We chose tennis broadcasts for our investigations. Addressing issue (i), we developed a system design and prototype to enhance the experience of watching tennis matches, focusing on blind spectators using audio descriptions and 3D audio, and evaluated our system with (n=12) in a controlled user evaluation. Our results indicate how audio descriptions gave clear information for the tennis ball placements, 3D audio provided subtle cues for the ball direction, and radio provided desired human commentary. For issue (ii), we conducted an online questionnaire (n=15) investigating the social context in which blind spectators consume SMB. Participant feedback indicated there is a demand for more accessible SMB content such that people can consume SMB by themselves and with their friends. Participants were enthusiastic for a revised system design mixing elements from 3D audio and audio description. We discuss our results in the context of social SMB spectatorship, concluding with insights into accessible SMB technologies.

Identification of Challenges and Best Practices for Including Users with Disabilities in User-Based Testing

“…User-based testing in an online environment due to the pandemic or other reasons often results in unreliable findings [51]. Conducting remote user-based testing can bring new challenges, especially when performing research with participants with disabilities when too little support is provided for the users [52]. Participants' technical barriers, such as bad internet connection, device limits, software compatibility issues, and other challenges, can make testing at home only sometimes feasible [53].…”

“…The largest issue while extracting good practice was to consider the differences in disability types and consequently the different requirements of each type, making the creation of a list of good practices for everyone or all types of impairments almost impossible. Providing information in an accessible format about user testing activities before starting the test will motivate participants to increase their assurance, self-confidence, and self-efficacy [52,56].…”