An Analysis of Usability on Secondary Functions for the Hearing Impaired to Enjoy Metaverse Contents － Focusing on popular music concerts －

Abstract

Hearing-impaired people should be able to enjoy virtual reality content without discrimination. The development of metaverse has led to the success of virtual environment contents, including virtual concerts, but services for the deaf are still insufficient in this environment. In this paper, we present an auxiliary solution for hearing-impaired people to enjoy metaverse concerts and made video test samples for usability evaluation. To demonstrate that the solutions presented in this study help hearing-impaired people enjoy metaverse concerts, we made video test materials that provide secondary functions such as motion captions and haptic vibration. Test materials that provide basic subtitles were compared with test materials that applied motion captions, haptic vibrations, and both. To this end, an effectiveness evaluation and satisfaction evaluation using the Likert scale were conducted, and then a subjective satisfaction-oriented interview was conducted. Providing motion captions and haptic vibration together resulted in a relatively high usability evaluation effectiveness score, and specific requirements, problems, and improvements were identified through user interviews. If actual programs are developed and distributed based on this study, the quality of cultural life can be improved in the virtual environment of the hearing-impaired people.