Masterarbeit
Barrier-free Video Player with Sign Language Interpretation
Completion
2023/11
Research Area
Students
Salman Alam Siddiqi
Advisers
Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Heil
Description
Individuals who identify as Deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, late-deafened, or deaf-blind face a variety of challenges every day when using digital platforms on various devices, such as computers, tablets, smartphones, and game consoles. Media without captions, audio without transcripts, a lack of sign language interpretations, and non-inclusive social media platforms are among the most prominent impediments.
In this thesis, a video player platform for people who cannot hear, that supports easy access to arbitrary video streams is designed and implemented. The solution needs to be accessible through all major current browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) and mobile platforms (Android, iOS). The video player needs to address common problems like screen resolution, saturation, and user focus issues due to sign language interpreters in the same frame as the main video. Its control concept needs to be adequate and easy to handle for the target group of deaf people, allowing them to resize the screen, and setting the quality and volume of the video for other non-deaf persons in the same space. Also, suitable non-audio notification mechanisms for interactive features such as chats need to be devised.
The objective of this thesis is the creation of a solution to solve the above problem of deaf-accessible video streaming based on barrier-free web and accessibility technologies and standards. This includes the state of the art analysis in these fields. The demonstration of feasibility through evaluation experiments with deaf user groups for UN streams or similar content regarding qualitative feedback on the usability is part of this thesis.
