D2.3 Interim Report on Pilot Services - the School of Engineering ...

Research objectives1. To identify the frequency with which viewers with known hearing impairmentsreact adversely to semantic errors, problems caused by presentation differencesbetween live and pre-recorded subtitles and the problems caused by delay betweenthe programming and SDH subtitles.2. To identify the perceived importance of these three categories of problems, rangingfrom ”cosmetic blemish” to ”show stopper”.Research designThe study is explorative only. We will need to ask participants about their priorexperience with SDH subtitles, because familiarity with the differences in presentationconventions may improve SDH usefulness. iThe design of the study is based on previous DR research from the mid nineties duringwhich systematic work was done on subtitling using a holistic method.Much academic research on subtitles ”primes” viewers into providing specific feedbackon, say, spelling mistakes, the use of colour, the use of two or three lines of subtitles,reading speed etc. The aim here is not to introduce bias of this kind, but to have someglobal measure of the accessibility of a given service.The same set-up can be used to test Audio Description and other proposed services and,indeed, any kind of television programming requiring user interaction.It should be noted that TV-Avisen contains a mix of inter- and intra-lingual subtitles,the former being pre-recorded, the later produced by ”re-speaking”. If we can find asolution for news, solutions for other programming genres should be less demanding.Experimental set-up1. Introduction to the study. A folder sent to participants in advance.2. Briefing of individual viewers at DR (early evening)3. Training in use of buzzer, an open source tool supported by DTV4All and the EBUfor recording any output from a television set, marking events on the file andallowing for annotations.4. Watch TV-Avisena. The observer makes notes on viewer reactions during the 25 minute periodb. The viewer presses buzzer5. The observer and the viewer review the recording of the programme with timemarkers indicating points at which the viewer pressed the buzzer.a. The observer takes the viewer through each buzzer point, discusses the viewersreactions and compares with own notes from observationb. Observer and viewer agree on annotation that the observer records in the filec. Observer saves the recording with all annotations for future reference6. Observer administers a short questionnaire on Survey Monkey (same ID as file, noname) addressing:a. Background parameters (demographic, use of access services)Page 36