Closed ASL Interpreting for Online Videos

TL;DR

This paper introduces a customizable closed interpreting tool for online videos aimed at improving accessibility for deaf viewers, allowing adjustable interpreter display settings to enhance comprehension and user experience.

Contribution

It presents a novel adjustable closed interpreting system for online videos, addressing limitations of traditional captioning and interpreter videos for deaf users.

Findings

Deaf viewers prefer adjustable interpreter display settings.

Adjustability improves comprehension and user satisfaction.

The tool enhances accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing audiences.

Abstract

Deaf individuals face great challenges in today's society. It can be very difficult to be able to understand different forms of media without a sense of hearing. Many videos and movies found online today are not captioned, and even fewer have a supporting video with an interpreter. Also, even with a supporting interpreter video provided, information is still lost due to the inability to look at both the video and the interpreter simultaneously. To alleviate this issue, we came up with a tool called closed interpreting. Similar to closed captioning, it will be displayed with an online video and can be toggled on and off. However, the closed interpreter is also user-adjustable. Settings, such as interpreter size, transparency, and location, can be adjusted. Our goal with this study is to find out what deaf and hard of hearing viewers like about videos that come with interpreters, and whether the adjustability is beneficial.