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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Comput. Sci.
Sec. Human-Media Interaction
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2025.1575176
'Choices? That's The Dream": Challenges and Opportunities in Non-Speech Information Closed-Captioning
Provisionally accepted
Lloyd May 1*
Michael Clemens 2
Khang Dang 2 Keita Ohshiro 2 Sripathi Sridhar 2
Pauline Wee 3 Magdalena Fuentes 3
Sooyeon Lee 2 Mark Cartwright 2- 1 Stanford University, Stanford, United States
- 2 New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, United States
- 3 New York University, New York City, New York, United States
Access to non-speech information (NSI) in video content is essential to creating accessible and engaging video content, particularly for D/deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) audiences. In this paper we present an overview of the current state of NSI captioning research, professional practice, and user preferences. Utilizing a mixed methods approach consisting of a systematic literature review, a large online survey of closed-caption users, and an interview study with DHH caption users and professional captioners, we offer systematic insights into the current challenges related to NSI captioning faced by DHH users and professional captioners, trends in recent NSI captioning research, as well as opportunities for future work that enhance user agency, utilize integrated research methodologies, and broaden community involvement.
Keywords: Closed-captioning, subtitles, Non-Speech Information, Sound effects, Music, deaf and hard-of-hearing, accessibility
Received: 11 Feb 2025; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 May, Clemens, Dang, Ohshiro, Sridhar, Wee, Fuentes, Lee and Cartwright. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lloyd May, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
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