Impacts on quality: Enjoyment factors in blind and low vision audience entertainment ratings: A qualitative study

• Published in: PloS one 2018-12, Vol.13 (12), p.e0208165-e0208165
• Main Authors: Naraine, Mala D, Fels, Deborah I, Whitfield, Margot
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Advertising executives; Analysis; Audiences; Audio data; Biology and Life Sciences; Blindness; Comedies; Correlation analysis; Emotions; Entertainment; Health aspects; Humans; Information technology; Language; Leisure Activities - psychology; Longitudinal Studies; Low vision; Low vision aids; Medicine and Health Sciences; Motion picture directors & producers; Ontario; Pleasure; Qualitative Research; Research and Analysis Methods; Social Sciences; Surgery; Surveys and Questionnaires; Television; Vision; Vision, Low - psychology; Vision, Low - rehabilitation; Visual perception; Visually Impaired Persons - psychology; Visually Impaired Persons - rehabilitation
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208165

Audio description (AD) is one of the main methods that people who are blind or low vision (B/LV) use to access film, television, and theatre content. AD is a second audio track inserted into the space(s) where speech is absent, which tends to be only a few seconds. Contained in that second track is an audio description of the important visual information contained within a specific scene. However, as there is insufficient time to describe all visual information, decisions about what is important to describe and how to present that information (style) to optimize a B/LV viewer's entertainment experience are required. Most research to date has considered only short-term, single-episode experiences to gauge viewers' reactions to the AD content. In addition, this research typically has used a monotone, single style of audio description, which is defined as "the conventional style" in this paper. We use an integrative style instead, that is defined as 'AD designed to fit a specific show", and differed between shows. We carried out a within-subjects longitudinal study with eight episodes of a dark comedy, using different description styles and describers in order to assess viewer engagement and preferences for AD describer style, language use, timing, and fit to the show. Twenty-four blind participants viewed and rated all eight episodes. Major findings included that most participants found the integrative style entertaining, a fit with the specific episodes, and enjoyable. Some participants, however, preferred the conventional style and struggled with the language and topic of a dark comedy and its associated descriptions.