Television dialogue; balancing audibility, attention and accessibility

Ward, L; Shirley, BG

Abstract

Sound effects and other non-speech broadcast elements play many roles within television and radio content, including
progressing the narrative. However, accessibility strategies for hard of hearing listeners tend to reduce all non-speech
elements equally, regardless of their narrative importance. This work considers what effect narratively important
sound effects have on dialogue intelligibility and whether their narrative benefit outweighs their potential to mask
speech for hard of hearing listeners.
This paper summarises previous work by the authors which showed the addition of relevant sound effects consistently
improved keyword recognition in noise for normal hearing listeners. The current work investigates this effect with
hard of hearing listeners. For unpredictable speech, this work shows that how much sound effects improve keyword
recognition monotonically decreased as a listener’s audiometric hearing loss, in their better hearing ear, increased. For
predictable speech, inclusion of sound effects improved keyword recognition by 13.2% on average (compared with
18.7% for normal hearing listeners). However, this improvement was less consistent than for normal hearing listeners
and did not display the same monotonic relationship with hearing loss severity as unpredictable speech. Other factors
which may influence the narrative benefit of sound effects, including their potential to mask speech, are discussed.
Ongoing work to further characterise the relationship between sound effects, narrative benefit, and masking potential
for hard of hearing listeners is described. Implications for object-based accessibility solutions for hard of hearing
listeners as well as for accessibility strategies for the visually impaired like Enhanced Audio Description are also
outlined.

Citation

Ward, L., & Shirley, B. Television dialogue; balancing audibility, attention and accessibility. Presented at Conference on Accessibility in Film, Television and Interactive Media, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, United Kingdom

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Conference on Accessibility in Film, Television and Interactive Media
• Conference Location: Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, United Kingdom
• End Date: Oct 15, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 15, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 11, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 11, 2022
• Publisher URL: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/08009l5g2g88i97/AAAI3b_yRkrrljNuyiPeRvP7a?dl=0&preview=Ward+and+Shirley+-+Television+Dialogue.pdf
• Related Public URLs: https://enhancingaudiodescription.com/conference-on-accessibility-in-film-television-and-interactive-media
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference