Evaluating subtitle readability in media immersive environments

Abstract

The advances in VR technology has led to immersive videos rapidly gaining popularity. Accessibility to immersive media should be offered and subtitles are the most popular accessibility service. Research on subtitle readability has led to guidelines and standards (W3C, ISO/IEC/ITU 20071-23:2018). More research into subtitle presentation modes in 360º is needed in order to move towards understanding optimum readability. Evaluating readability for subtitles in immersive media environments requires a flexible and user-friendly framework for both creating the subtitles and presenting the generated subtitle file in a fully functional immersive video player, in order to understand the final view in the environment and assess its quality. This article starts by looking at the readability recommendations in W3C and ISO/IEC/ITU. The second part will describe the new features required in immersive subtitle presentations. The final section will describe the new web-based framework that allows the generation of immersive subtitles where readability may be tested. The framework has adopted a contrast and comparison approach towards instant readability evaluation.