How Can Accessibility for Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Players be Improved in Video Games?

This research investigates how the accessibility of video games can be improved for deaf and hearing-impaired players. The journal is divided into several areas, first, examining the use of subtitles and closed captions used in video games; and second, how visual cues can be used to provide better accessibility for deaf and hearing-impaired gamers. This includes effectively creating suitable atmospheres and mood in games through lighting as well as having a varied environment that prevents the players from getting bored with the setting of a game and finally exploring current best practices within the gaming industry. Through this research data the issues with accessibility can be found as well as how a lack of accessibility affects deaf and hearing-impaired gamers. Research from this investigation supports some of the evidence from other researchers in the field that accessibility features for deaf and hearing-impaired can be considered and implemented.

[inaudible]: Point of Audition Representations of Deafness and the Cochlear Implant in A Quiet Place (2018)

Interrogating point of audition (POA) sound through the silences, noises, and closed captions of A Quiet Place’s critically lauded soundscapes, this article examines the ways point of audition aurally and rhetorically constructs deafness, technology, and the audio-viewer. In its sonic rendering of the post-apocalyptic world, A Quiet Place actively involves the audio-viewer in its fantastical conceit and ‘fantasy’ of deafness, folding the audience into the complex cyborgian politics and potential of the malfunctioning cochlear implant. This diegetic technological breakdown merges and tangles with the technology of the film, the point of audition sound highlighting the immersive capabilities and audist expectations of cinematic soundscapes. Yet, in this straining towards ‘immersion’, the uncaptioned silences of Regan’s point of audition further accentuate issues of access, raising questions of the composition and meaning of immersion and silence. Through the shades of silence and sharp whining feedback of A Quiet Place, this article ultimately details the possibilities and complications of analysing point of audition sound, in the process, illustrating the harmonic resonation of the studies of sound, deafness, and disability. This article is the winner of the 2020 Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award, selected by the Sound and Music Special Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in conjunction with Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

Saying “Thank You” for Quality Closed Captions: A Promising Shift in Inviting Access

Even as deaf and hard of hearing filmmakers and activists repeatedly call for quality captions on all video content, many non-deaf filmmakers have managed to remain unaware of the need for and purpose of captions. Implicit biases drive many filmmakers to exclude access from their budgets and their films. These biases include a notion that caption users are not a viable audience, concerns that captions will threaten the beauty of video images by covering part of the screen, and an audist attitude that any level and quality of transcription of spoken dialogue must be adequate. The author is a hearing captioner and filmmaker. In this essay, she reflects on how she advocates for film accessibility through captions. She describes her strategy, how she frames “onscreen real estate,” and responses from filmmakers for captions, including the hopeful way that some say thank you. Quality captions are contrasted against woefully inadequate captions—or “craptions”—provided automatically by YouTube and by companies with cut-rate services. The author considers a focus on inviting access rather than waiting for a compliance-based method of only captioning a film when the filmmaker learns it is required.

Improving and Evaluating a Software Tool for Providing Animated Text Enhancements to Close Captions

While television and film technologies have changed according to user preferences, Closed Captions (CC) have suffered from a lack of innovation since their inception in the 1970’s. For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities CC provides only limited access to non-speech audio information. This thesis explores the usability of a new captioning application, EnACT that provides animated text for non-speech audio information such as the emotions portrayed and their corresponding intensities. Reactions from software users were collected and evaluated. Participants found the software easy to use and a suitable alternative to conventional CC options for non-speech audio however, they disliked the amount of time it took for them to adjust timing for the animations of the captions. Overall, participants rated EnACT easy to use and the task of assigning emotions and their corresponding intensities to the video script as relatively simple, however, additional emotional labels were requested by participants overall.

Improving and Evaluating a Software Tool for Providing Animated Text Enhancements to Close Captions

While television and film technologies have changed according to user preferences, Closed Captions (CC) have suffered from a lack of innovation since their inception in the 1970’s. For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities CC provides only limited access to non-speech audio information. This thesis explores the usability of a new captioning application, EnACT that provides animated text for non-speech audio information such as the emotions portrayed and their corresponding intensities. Reactions from software users were collected and evaluated. Participants found the software easy to use and a suitable alternative to conventional CC options for non-speech audio however, they disliked the amount of time it took for them to adjust timing for the animations of the captions. Overall, participants rated EnACT easy to use and the task of assigning emotions and their corresponding intensities to the video script as relatively simple, however, additional emotional labels were requested by participants overall.

"River Run" (Nancy Maker Brown Song) Revisioned and Reimagined

Video Description (on YouTube): "River Run." Revisioned and Reimagined. 2021. Words, music, arrangement by kei slaughter. Originally written in 2019 while participating in the Acoustic Guitar Project - where artists are given one guitar, for one week, to write one song. This intimate performance is a reimagined and revisioned version, weaving deconstructed elements of the original work, with improvised vocalizations, body percussion, and flute loops, and live vocal and flute performance. "River Run" is dedicated to my maternal great great great great grandmother, Nancy Maker Brown. For me, this (re)mix is an exploration and expression of Black aesthetics - imagining and conjuring new sound worlds through my queer, gender expansive Black body while engaging with ancestral memory. The stripped back elements of breath, tone, and voice, were intentionally used to ground me in my musical-cultural origins, back to a kind of roots music. Thus, embodying the West African concept of Sankofa, as I look back to the past, I also look ahead towards futurity, reflected through the use of live looping, layering, and circular storytelling. Closed captions available.

Enhancing the inclusivity and accessibility of your online calls

Multinational video conferencing and online calls for training and community building have been commonplace for many organisations, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. These calls can be intended to be hands-on and interactive, but it requires conscious designing, pre-planning, and careful moderation in order to make them inclusive for a range of abilities. This article describes formats and tools for designing online training calls for accessibility. Measures include high-quality real-time or post-hoc transcriptions or closed-captions for spoken content in calls, providing writing-based interactive discussions, and consulting with experts and people with lived experience before any of these actions are implemented. Many of these options are cost-free, although sometimes for-pay alternatives may offer better accessibility if funding is possible. Finally, iteration and feedback are essential parts of accessibility design in participatory events including online calls. As organisers, we should accept that we may make mistakes and hence, ensure that we build pathways to enable evidence and experience-based improvements.These measures will aid participation for a broad audience but may be especially helpful for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people for whom the call language isn’t their preferred language, and people who are not comfortable speaking in front of a group.

A Poisson Factorization Topic Model for the Study of Creative Documents (and Their Summaries)

The author proposes a topic model tailored to the study of creative documents (e.g., academic papers, movie scripts), which extends Poisson factorization in two ways. First, the creativity literature emphasizes the importance of novelty in creative industries. Accordingly, this article introduces a set of residual topics that represent the portion of each document that is not explained by a combination of common topics. Second, creative documents are typically accompanied by summaries (e.g., abstracts, synopses). Accordingly, the author jointly models the content of creative documents and their summaries, and captures systematic variations in topic intensities between the documents and their summaries. This article validates and illustrates the model in three domains: marketing academic papers, movie scripts, and TV show closed captions. It illustrates how the joint modeling of documents and summaries provides some insight into how people summarize creative documents and enhances understanding of the significance of each topic. It shows that the model described produces new measures of distinctiveness that can inform the perennial debate on the relation between novelty and success in creative industries. Finally, the author shows how the proposed model may form the basis for decision support tools that assist people in writing summaries of creative documents.