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Audio Description makes films, shows and TV programs accessible to visually impaired audience. It is expensive so wide adoption of this technology is not practical. Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requires that broadcaster describes a minimum of four hours of primetime programming a week. Production companies do not see any incentives to move beyond the required minimum. This paper investigates the possibility of making AD profitable by making a described movie, show or program attractive to all kind of audiences including visually impaired. We argue that AD can become a revenue generation product widely adopted by production companies.

In this article we describe a real and practical mobile solution called Touch Me. This smart mobility project is based on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. It is implemented for Android phones and has been tested by older and blind people. After a few tests we believe that this kind of software is a new and easier way for accessibility. It is especially useful for identifying and describing objects. The user simply has to touch the object with the smartphone and then listen an audio description of its content. To make this possible it is necessary to attach NFC smart tags to the object and to write the description on it using another mobile application, called Write Me Description. In addition, Touch Me can be used to manage basic functions of a smartphone like making a call or launching an application. In this case we need to combine this software with a personalized pad that must include smart tags. To configure these tags we need another two applications, called Write Me Contact and Write Me App.

Following EU directives on Media Access and Ambient Assisted Living, the broadcasting industry needs to introduce new services in order to guarantee access to all citizens. The article and its conclusions are part of the EU project DTV4ALL, which focuses on some possible broadcasting scenarios for achieving barrier-free television for those with visual impairments. Five enhanced Audiodescription (AD) scenarios were proposed and evaluated: 1) Live streaming Internet TV with AD, 2) AD reception in a group situation, 3) Video on demand over a set-top-box, 4) Video on PC and 5) Podcasts. User evaluation concerning usefulness, quality and usability of the services was assessed using questionnaires. Results of the user evaluation show that not only are AD emerging services technically viable but they are also positively rated by users. Implementation of these services will provide improved access to content, making TV accessible for all.

This paper proposes a methodology to enhance audio described movies (i.e., films augmented with additional narration to explain visual content to viewers who are blind or visually impaired) by providing positional information of on-screen actors through haptics. Using a vibrotactile belt, we map the location of a character across the screen to a relative location around the waist, and the relative distance of a character from the camera is mapped to a tactile rhythm. Character movement is subsequently conveyed through these two dimensions. All participants, including one visually impaired subject, felt the vibrations improved their visualization of the clips. This subject also felt that it was quite easy to combine the information received through audio and haptics, and that the vibrations were not obstructing the subject’s attention to audio.

The ongoing Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) switchover leads to an interesting opportunity for the implementation of advanced television services. Actually, these services can even be interactive, since it is foreseen that the required Set-Top Boxes (STB) could be equipped with an Internet connection. However, among the future clients of DTT there are a large number of elderly and visually impaired people who can not entirely benefit of these services due to their physical limitations. Nevertheless, considering that Interactive Television (iTV) services can contribute to improve life quality of this type of users, it is essential to apply accessibility, usability and design-oriented guidelines for their development. In this context, this paper introduces a research related to universal design applied to iTV, being its aim to propose an advanced and accessible audio description service. In order to perceive the visually impaired users’ problems and needs, a group of individuals was asked to participate in an interview.

Bar charts are one of the most commonly used diagram types. Tactile diagrams are a widely used technique for presenting graphics to people who are blind. We explored how to present bar charts using a tactile presentation. Our user study used blind participants and evaluated both user preferences and performance. We found that providing grid lines and values in a tactile diagram was preferred to a direct transcription. In addition, presenting the data as a tactile table was preferred to a tactile chart. Both of these approaches reduced the error rate, and presentation as a table had performance benefits. We also investigated the comparative usability of: a tactile presentation, an audio description of the bar chart, and a tactile/audio presentation in which a tactile diagram is overlaid on a touch-sensitive device which provides audio feedback on demand. We found that tactile was the most preferred while audio was the least.

This paper reviews the nature and size of the accessibility challenge and identifies pitfalls in the current strategies to promote e-inclusiveness. Using examples such as the DTV4ALL project which focuses on free-to-air broadcasting, the paper argues the case for working systematically with stakeholders associated with the entire access service supply chain to draw up and implement a continent-wide strategy to promote e-inclusiveness and digital television.

Technology can be an integrative tool with which to facilitate universal access to museums and their works via virtual guides that accompany the user making the visit more inclusive and accessible. With this aim it is necessary to keep in mind accessibility requirements which guide the design and development process. Since there are no clear procedures for defining and including these requirements, this paper presents a proposal for requirements capture and definitions of accessibility mechanisms which assure their integration, following studies and standards in the area of accessibility.

Automatic content extraction from multimedia files is a hot topic nowadays. Moving Picture Experts Group develops MPEG-7 standard, which aims to define a unified interface for multimedia content description, including audio data. Audio description in MPEG-7 comprises features that can be useful for any content-based search of sound files. In this paper, we investigate how to optimize sound representation in terms of musical instrument recognition purposes. We propose to trace trends in evolution of values of MPEG-7 descriptors in time, as well as their combinations. Described process is a typical example of KDD application, consisting of data preparation, feature extraction and decision model construction. Discussion of efficiency of applied classifiers illustrates capabilities of further progress in optimization of sound representation. We believe that further research in this area would provide background for automatic multimedia content description.

The number of applications on graphics workstations using sound in order to enhance the human-computer interaction capabilities is increasing. Using and handling sound in addition to text and graphics seems to be the next forthcoming step towards a multimedia environment.