Accessibility Research in Digital Audiovisual Media: What Has Been Achieved and What Should Be Done Next?

The consumption of digital audiovisual media is a mainstay of many people’s lives. However, people with accessibility needs often have issues accessing this content. With a view to addressing this inequality, there exists a wide range of interventions that researchers have explored to bridge this accessibility gap. Despite this work, our understanding of the capability of these interventions is poor. In this paper, we address this through a systematic review of the literature, creating a dataset of and analysing N = 181 scientific papers. We have found that certain areas have accrued a disproportionate amount of attention from the research community – for example, blind and visually impaired and d/Deaf and hard of hearing people account for of papers (N = 170). We describe challenges researchers have addressed, end-user communities of focus, and interventions examined. We conclude by evaluating gaps in the literature and areas that could use more focus on in the future.