Usability tests for personalised subtitles
Lluís Mas Manchón | Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Pilar Orero | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Over the past decade, subtitles have developed along with broadcast and broadband technology. Viewers nowadays enjoy new
opportunities to customize subtitles to best meet their personal preferences or needs. This study aims to identify end-user
subtitle setting preferences, to investigate whether these settings have an effect on content comprehension, and to explore
subtitle usability for two groups of participants, those under the age of 65 and those over 65. In an experiment, three subtitle
features were open to customization: the position, the box and the size of the subtitle, before and after participants watched an
on-demand TV documentary produced by the Catalan public broadcaster TVC. Results confirm a preference for bottom and medium
subtitles. Furthermore, while the under 65 segment made satisfactory use of the system, the over 65 segment experienced different
levels of usability and reported different capabilities and problems.
Keywords: subtitles, customization, user-centric design, accessibility, convergence, usability
Article outline
- Introduction
- Media accessibility and usability
- Subtitle position and text size
- Objectives and methodology
- Participants, materials and procedure
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 28 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.18016.man
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.18016.man
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