Accessibility in 360° video players

Abstract

Accessibility is a key requirement for any multimedia tool and application. With the current trend towards immersive experiences, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and 360o video, it becomes key that these environments are adapted to be fully accessible. However, until recently the focus has been mostly on adapting the existing techniques to fit immersive displays, rather than considering new approaches for accessibility designed specifically for these increasingly relevant media experiences. This paper surveys a wide range of 360o video players and examines the features they include for dealing with accessibility, such as Subtitles, Audio Description, Sign Language, User Interfaces and other interaction features, like voice control and support for multi-screen scenarios. These features have been chosen based on guidelines from standardization contributions, like in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the International Communication Union (ITU), and from research contributions for making 360° video consumption experiences accessible. The in-depth analysis has been part of a research effort towards the development of a fully inclusive and accessible 360° video player. The paper concludes by discussing how the newly developed player has gone above and beyond the existing solutions and guidelines, by providing accessibility features that meet the expectations for a widely used immersive medium, like 360° video.

Subtitling 3D VR Content with Limited 6DoF: Presentation Modes and Guiding Methods

“…An additional recent study [20] has contributed with a VR360 video corpus to characterize commercially available subtitling solutions and practices, by analyzing the YouTube channels of two major providers: BBC and NYT. On the one hand, this analysis reflects that the Always-visible presentation mode, which seems to be the most preferred by users, is not yet adopted by these providers, although a few VR360 players have recently started considering it [13]. On the other hand, this analysis confirms that many key requirements for efficiently subtitling VR360 content, as analyzed in [9], are not yet met.…”

“…By leveraging insights from earlier work on VR360 content (e.g. [9] [13]), the paper proposes novel presentation modes and guiding methods to not only deal with the freedom to explore the omnidirectional 360º scenes, but also with additional specificities of 3D VR compared to VR360 content: depth, 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF), content blocking and viewing perspectives. In particular, the paper aims at shedding some light with regard to two key Research Questions (RQ) when it comes to the implementation of subtitling, as the most widespread access service, in 3D VR environments:…”

Universal access: user needs for immersive captioning

“…Currently, there exist no standard guidelines or implementation for captions in immersive videos, and although many immersive video players now offer the ability to play 360° media, the support for any accessible services is extremely limited. At best the players generally support the implementation of traditional captions fixed within the user’s view [ 9 ].…”

Immersive Captioning: Developing a framework for evaluating user needs

“…Currently, there exist no standard guidelines or implementation for captions in immersive videos and although many immersive video players now offer the ability to play 360 o media the support for any accessible services is extremely limited. At best the players generally support the implementation of traditional captions fixed within the users view [6].…”