Understanding livestream platforms' accessibility challenges for minority groups, such as people with disabilities, is critical to increasing the diversity and inclusion of those platforms. While prior work investigated the experiences of streamers with vision or motor loss, little is known about the experiences of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) streamers who must work with livestreaming platforms that heavily depend on audio. We conducted semi-structured interviews with DHH streamers to learn why they livestream, how they navigate livestream platforms and related challenges. Our findings revealed their desire to break the stereotypes towards the DHH groups via livestream and the intense interplay between interaction methods, such as sign language, texts, lip language, background music, and viewer characteristics. Major accessibility challenges include the lack of real-time captioning, the small sign language reading window, and misinterpretation of sign language. We present design considerations for improving the accessibility of the livestream platforms.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581053
Visual arts play an important role in cultural life and provide access to social heritage and self-enrichment, but most visual arts are inaccessible to blind people. Researchers have explored different ways to enhance blind people's access to visual arts (e.g., audio descriptions, tactile graphics). However, how blind people adopt these methods remains unknown. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 blind visual arts patrons to understand how they engage with visual artwork and the factors that influence their adoption of visual arts access methods. We further examined interview insights in a follow-up survey (N=220). We present: 1) current practices and challenges of accessing visual artwork in-person and online (e.g., Zoom tour), 2) motivation and cognition of perceiving visual arts (e.g., imagination), and 3) implications for designing visual arts access methods. Overall, our findings provide a roadmap for technology-based support for blind people's visual arts experiences.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580941
Song signing is a method practiced by people who are d/Deaf and non-d/Deaf individuals to visually represent music and make music accessible through sign language and body movements. Although there is growing interest in song signing, there is a lack of understanding on what d/Deaf people value about song signing and how to make song signing productions they would consider acceptable. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 d/Deaf participants to gain a deeper understanding of what they value in music and song signing. We then interviewed 14 song signers to understand their experiences and processes in creating song signing performances. From this study, we identify three complex, interrelated layers of the song signing creation process and discuss how they can be supported and completed to potentially bridge the cultural divide between the d/Deaf and non-d/Deaf audiences and guide more culturally responsive creation of music.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581287
Existing assistive technologies (AT) often fail to support the unique needs of blind and visually impaired (BVI) people. Thus, BVI people have become domain experts in customizing and `hacking’ AT, creatively suiting their needs. We aim to understand this behavior in depth, and how BVI people envision creating future DIY personalized AT. We conducted a multi-part qualitative study with 12 blind participants: an interview on unique uses of AT, a two-week diary study to log use cases, and a scenario-based design session to imagine creating future technologies. We found that participants work to design new AT both implicitly through creative use cases, and explicitly through regular ideation and development. Participants envisioned creating a variety of new technologies, and we summarize expected benefits and concerns of using a DIY technology approach. From our results, we present design considerations for future DIY technology systems to support existing customization and `hacking' behaviors.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581249
Digital artboards, which hold objects rather than pixels (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides), remain largely inaccessible for blind and low-vision (BLV) users. Building on prior findings about the experiences of BLV users with digital artboards, we present a novel tool called A11yBoard, an interactive multimodal system that makes interpreting and authoring digital artboards accessible. A11yBoard combines a web-based drawing canvas paired with a mobile touch screen device such as a tablet. The mobile device displays the same canvas and enables risk-free spatial exploration of the artboard via touch and gesture. Speech recognition, non-speech audio, and keyboard-based commands are also used for input and output. Through a series of pilot studies and formal task-based user studies with BLV participants, we show that A11yBoard provides (1) intuitive spatial reasoning about two-dimensional objects, (2) multimodal access to objects’ properties and relationships, and (3) eyes-free creating and editing of objects to establish their desired properties and positions.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580655
We present DuoRhythmo, a collaborative accessible digital musical interface (CADMI) that gives people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (PALS) the experience of remotely and collaboratively creating music in real-time. We designed DuoRhythmo specifically to be utilized for eye tracking and optimized it for head- and computer mouse interaction, as well using a user-centered design approach. Together with five PALS, we completed a mixed-methods evaluation to assess the accessibility of DuoRhythmo. Participants described the CADMI using the Microsoft Desirability Toolkit (MDT) as fun, empowering, accessible, easy to use, engaging, and stimulating and gave an average System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 79.5. We suggest further research on remote collaboration within the field of accessible digital musical instruments (ADMIs) using the term CADMI to explore the positive effects of collaborative music-making on the quality of life of PALS.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581285