Adapting Subtitles: Towards Accessible Subtitled Media for People with Aphasia

Subtitles can be consumed via TVs, laptops, and smartphones, which play a key role in many people’s daily lives. However, this marginalises people with complex accessibility needs in the context of comprehension, such as people with aphasia, a communication and language impairment. To address this accessibility challenge with a human-centred design approach, I started by building rapport with the community of focus and involving them in all stages of the design process. This paper reports on ongoing doctoral work that explores how personalising and customising subtitled media can fulfil complex accessibility needs for communities with aphasia, by delineating the research background and motivation, the accomplished work, and the proposed next steps.