Designing a Podcast Platform for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users

Abstract

Listening to podcasts is a popular way for people to spend their time. However, little focus has been given to how accessible pod-cast platforms are for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) people. We present a DHH-centered accessible podcast platform prototype developed with user-centered design. Our proposed design was constructed through semi-structured interviews (n=7) and prototype design feedback sessions (n=8) with DHH users. We encourage podcast platform designers to adopt our design recommendations to make podcasts more inclusive for DHH people and recommend how podcast hosts can make their shows more accessible. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Accessibility.

Full text

Designing a Podcast Platform for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Users
Becca Dingman
bad6955@g.rit.edu
School of Information
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY, USA
Garreth W. Tigwell
garreth.w.tigwell@rit.edu
School of Information
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY, USA
Kristen Shinohara
kristen.shinohara@rit.edu
School of Information
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY, USA
ABSTRACT
Listening to podcasts is a popular way for people to spend their
time. However, little focus has been given to how accessible pod-
cast platforms are for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) people.
We present a DHH-centered accessible podcast platform prototype
developed with user-centered design. Our proposed design was
constructed through semi-structured interviews (n=7) and proto-
type design feedback sessions (n=8) with DHH users. We encourage
podcast platform designers to adopt our design recommendations
to make podcasts more inclusive for DHH people and recommend
how podcast hosts can make their shows more accessible.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Human-centered computing →Accessibility.
KEYWORDS
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, Podcasts, Design
ACM Reference Format:
Becca Dingman, Garreth W. Tigwell, and Kristen Shinohara. 2021. Design-
ing a Podcast Platform for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users. In The 23rd
International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
(ASSETS ’21), October 18–22, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY,
USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3441852.3476523
1 INTRODUCTION & RELATED WORK
Engaging with podcasts has become an extremely popular way for
people to spend their time. However, little work has investigated
the attitudes and concerns that Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH)
individuals have toward podcasts.
Podcasts typically take an audio-based format [
18
], in which a
host (or several) discuss a particular topic from a range of dier-
ent subject matter [
15
]. Podcast engagement is on the rise [
19
],
with listeners in the US averaging about 8 podcasts per week [
19
],
demonstrating distinct engagement habits compared to music con-
sumption [
15
]. Podcasts not only provide a source of entertainment,
but they can be educational and support learning/teaching [
6
,
7
,
11
].
Despite the benets of podcasts, written transcripts of the con-
tent are often not provided because they cost money and it takes
time to create them [
5
,
17
], resulting in the worldwide exclusion
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For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
ASSETS ’21, October 18–22, 2021, Virtual Event, USA
©2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8306-6/21/10.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3441852.3476523
of 450 million+ people who are Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing [
20
].
Transcripts can improve podcast accessibility [
5
], support read-
ing comprehension in students [
6
,
8
], and DHH individuals nd
transcripts to be the best format to access long and dense audio
content [
10
], which is typical of podcast audio content. However,
delivering those transcripts must be achieved in an appropriate
way. Podcast platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcast do not
provide followers with a way to view the transcripts directly within
the platform, which means DHH users have to go to an external
source. This approach draws parallels with the problematic stance
of “separate-but-equal” [
12
,
13
]; instead, we should build an acces-
sible experience within the platform.
There are two requirements to address the current issues of
inaccessible podcast platforms: 1) we need an adaptable interface
for DHH users to choose their preferred transcript style [
10
], and
2) a fast and low cost means of transcribing the audio. Our work
is focused on the rst problem because although ASR technology
still has translation errors, eorts to improve ASR are ongoing [
9
],
yet, there has been no work to achieve the rst requirement.
We present a DHH-centered accessible podcast platform, which
was design through semi-structured interviews (7 DHH users)
and prototype design feedback sessions (8 DHH users). Our user-
centered design approach allowed us to understand how to improve
the current podcast platform design so that interaction with—and
presentation of—transcripts oers an enhanced positive experience
for DHH users.
2 PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT
Our work was guided by three research questions:
(RQ1)
What
are the experiences of DHH individuals when following a podcast
episode?
(RQ2)
What kind of features are necessary for a podcast
platform to be accessible by DHH users?
(RQ3)
How do DHH users
prefer to receive podcast transcripts? See [
3
] for a reection on using
interview and think-aloud methods with DHH participants.
2.1 Semi-Structured Interviews with DHH
Participants
We conducted semi-structured interviews to understand DHH users’
experiences with, and desires for, podcast features.
Procedure
: The remote interviews ranged from 20 to 45 minutes
and were led by the rst author who identies as a DHH researcher.
The interviews were in the preferred communication medium for
each of the DHH participants (e.g., American Sign Language (ASL),
captioning, simultaneous signing and spoken English (SimCom)).
All the video recordings were transcribed for analysis systemati-
cally [2].

ASSETS ’21, October 18–22, 2021, Virtual Event, USA Dingman et al.
Participants
: We interviewed seven participants who identied
as DHH, ages ranged between 21-27 years-old. Four participants
identied as male, one as female, and two as non-binary. All except
for one participant had some experience with listening to a podcast.
Results
: In general, we found that DHH users experimented and
wanted to listen to podcasts for various reasons. Two participants
mentioned they like listening to podcasts as background noise while
they did household chores or completed homework assignments.
Meanwhile, one participant never played a podcast before because
they knew they would struggle to hear the spoken content. The
other participants followed podcasts for a specic purpose.
Our rst main theme was: multiple factors need addressing to
make podcasts accessible for DHH users. Specically, participants
discussed challenges with podcast audio quality and voices. Partic-
ipants explained they would ask their hearing siblings, who also
listened to podcasts, for recommendations of podcasts with clear
voices. Whenever they missed information or struggled to under-
stand, participants would go back into the podcast and replay the
section to hopefully understand it the second or third time. Partic-
ipants reported this experience as frustrating. Some participants
shared strategies they used to enhance their listening experience,
such as using an app to automatically transcribe the audio of the
podcast. Participants also expected the timing should be seamless
between the audio and text appearing for captions. There was less
tolerance for prerecorded material to have a lag in the captions ver-
sus if the transcript was being generated in real-time during a live
session. While some participants were still avid podcast followers,
others no longer followed podcasts due to feeling exhausted, when
workarounds required too much attention or mental energy.
Our second main theme was: multiple podcast platform features
desired by DHH users. Specically, participants desired transcripts
or captioning provided on the podcast platforms. All participants
mentioned the desire for a summary of the episode to provide
some context of what will be discussed. One participant suggested
podcast hosts provide an article explaining the story of what will
be discussed, then the hosts share their opinions on the show. This
format would allow podcast users to have some prior understanding
of the story before the hosts’ commentary. Finally, participants
wanted the option to modify the transcript font, text size and color,
and color of the background. Participants suggested allowing users
to select caption or transcript view. Two participants did not want
to see the text ahead of where they were in the podcast, however
they liked the idea of being able to scroll back and see previous text.
Two other participants wanted to see the future text.
2.2 Prototyping cycles
Our interviews informed the initial low-delity prototype design
created in Figma. We ran an initial feedback session, rened the de-
sign to a high-delity prototype, and ran a second feedback session.
Acknowledging that prototyping can focus on dierent dimensions
of delity [
16
], we focused on understanding functionality and
interaction experiences rather than aesthetic and detailed visual re-
nement. Our low-delity prototype had fewer functional features
compared to the later rened high-delity prototype.
Prototype Evaluation Procedure
: The procedure was the same
for the low and high-delity evaluations. Participants spent 20-30
minutes interacting with the prototypes to complete seven scenar-
ios. The tasks were (1) search for a podcast, (2) read the podcast
summary, (3) read the episode summary, (4) turn on the captions, (5)
nd the keyword additional information, (6) review missed parts of
the podcast and (7) change the captioning style. We also asked ques-
tions regarding their preference in the various captioning styles.
Participants were entered in a $25 rae as compensation.
Prototype Evaluation Participants
: For the low-delity ses-
sions, we recruited four participants from the interviews who identi-
ed as DHH, ages ranged between 21-27 years-old. Two participants
identied as male, one as female, and one as non-binary. For the
high-delity sessions, we recruited a new set of four participants
who did not participate in the interviews or low-delity prototype
feedback session. Participants in the high-delity feedback session
identied as DHH, with ages ranging from 25-27 years-old. Three
participants identied as female and one as male.
Prototype Evaluation Results
: Figma is a software that allows
designers to create mock-ups or prototypes with some interaction
such as tapping, timed events/triggers, etc. These interactions are
intended to mimic an experience such as using a mobile application,
however some of the interactions still may not feel like the true
experience. All participants in both low and high-delity sessions
successfully completed all tasks with the exception of reviewing the
missed parts of the episode, but this could be due to the limitation of
Figma such as the software’s inability to allow for true scrolling on
the design screen. Despite this, we found that overall participants
in the nal session were satised with the features of the prototype
(P9: I would prefer hover because I would listen in real-time, and it
would be going at the same time as the speaker is speaking), even
mentioning they wanted to use this platform now to access podcasts
(P10: I would use this app like a few times a week).
3 A DHH-CENTERED PODCAST PLATFORM
Overall, our prototype allowed participants to rst log in to an
account, view a list of un-listened episodes from shows they follow,
the ability to search for podcasts, and read descriptions of the pod-
cast and episodes. Due to space limitations, we share screenshots
in Figure 1 that highlight only the key DHH features. The DHH
user can play an episode and select a CC (Closed Caption) button
(see top corner of Fig 1a), which then reveals a transcript with
interactive
bold & underlined
keywords (lower half of Fig 1a). A
description of the keyword appears in a popup (Fig 1b). The DHH
user can scroll through the transcript if they want to see previ-
ous text (Fig 1c). After selecting the gear icon, a settings menu
appears, which provides the DHH user with various content adjust-
ments including transcript style, text size, style, and color, and also
background color to improve contrast (Fig 1d). We designed the
transcript styles based on interviewee suggestions. The DHH user
has set the transcript text color to white with a black background
and a closed caption style format which only displays three lines
of text (Fig 1e). In the nal screenshot, the DHH user has set the
transcript with low contrasting text in a hover style that can be
repositioned on the screen to wherever is comfortable (Fig 1f).

Designing a Podcast Platform for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users ASSETS ’21, October 18–22, 2021, Virtual Event, USA
Figure 1: Left-Right,Top-Bottom: A series of screenshots demonstrating the prototype in use.
4 DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS AND
REFLECTIONS
We recommend:
(1)
accessible podcast platforms include transcripts
in various styles such as transcription, closed captioning and cap-
tioning overlaying the application so users can set their preferred
style;
(2)
adding customization options for the transcript such as
font, font size, color, and background—similar work demonstrates
adapting live television captioning for user preferences can enhance
the user experience [
1
,
4
]; and
(3)
providing DHH users with access
to additional information about the podcast, episode and keywords
in the transcript.
4.1 Recommendations for Podcast Hosts to
Consider
Based on the ndings from this work, it is clear that beyond app
design, audio quality of the podcast can impact user experience.
We recommend hosts:
(1)
begin each episode with a summary,
and then provide additional context of what may be referenced
during the podcast;
(2)
avoid additional sounds when each person
talks (e.g., avoid talking over one another when there are multiple
speakers, and refrain from laughing over another speaker who may
be talking); and
(3)
utilize post-hoc audio adjustments to amplify
speakers, which can be facilitated with a multi-mic setup.
5 CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
We conducted semi-structured interviews and prototype design
feedback sessions with DHH participant to develop an accessible
podcast platform. We identied current challenges DHH users face
with podcasts and through the development of a prototype con-
tribute design recommendations. Interesting future work could take
the concept of incorporating visual aids within transcripts [
14
], and
investigate how this could enhance the experience for DHH users.
Furthermore, since podcasts are typically a form of entertainment
people engage with while also completing other tasks (e.g., running),
there are opportunities to investigate how we might maintain multi-
tasking while reading the transcript. Finally, there is an opportunity
for future work to investigate what concerns podcast platforms and
podcast hosts may have with our current recommendations and
whether there needs to be further renement.
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