An evaluation of haptic descriptions for audio described films for individuals who are blind

Narrations of visual content, or audio descriptions, enhance the accessibility of video media for individuals who are blind. While the adoption of this assistive technology continues to broaden, audio descriptions have several limitations: they often lack detail (i.e., are abridged) to fit within dialogue-free gaps, and are difficult to use in fast-paced sequences or scenes of continuous dialogue. Haptic descriptions offer a promising augmentation to audio descriptions by conveying information through the sense of touch. This work presents audio-haptic descriptions with a user evaluation showing how haptic descriptions can add relevant information to films for improved comprehension.