Subtitles have become a routine feature of everyday media consumption, yet the factors driving their widespread use remain poorly understood. We present a systematic literature review of 180 studies published between 2007 and 2025, synthesising evidence across qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research. Our analysis shows that the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community has received the most significant research attention (53% of all studies), while other audiences remain underexplored despite rapidly rising adoption. We identify the audiences studied and the reasons reported for subtitle usage, tracing how these emphases have shifted over time. By integrating findings across methods, we reveal significant gaps in understanding subtitle use as a mainstream practice. This synthesis identifies opportunities for HCI to examine subtitles as a design space for personalisation, engagement, and inclusive media interaction.

A person’s online security setup is tied to the security of their individual accounts. Some accounts are particularly critical as they provide access to other online services. For example, an email account can be used for external account recovery or to assist with single-sign-on. The connections between accounts are specific to each user’s setup and create unique security problems that are difficult to remedy by following generic security advice. In this paper, we develop a method to gather and analyze users’ online accounts systematically. We demonstrate this in a user study with 20 participants and obtain detailed insights on how users’ personal setup choices and behaviors affect their overall account security. We discuss concrete usability and privacy concerns that prevented our participants from improving their account security. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for service providers and security experts to increase the adoption of security best practices.

Subtitles can help improve the understanding of media content. People enable subtitles based on individual characteristics (e.g., language or hearing ability), viewing environment, or media context (e.g., drama, quiz show). However, some people find that subtitles can be distracting and that they negatively impact their viewing experience. We explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding interaction with real-time personalisation of subtitled content. To understand how people currently interact with subtitles, we first conducted an online questionnaire with 102 participants. We used our findings to elicit requirements for a new approach called Adaptive Subtitles that allows the viewer to alter which speakers have subtitles displayed in real-time. We evaluated our approach with 19 participants to understand the interaction trade-offs and challenges within real-time adaptations of subtitled media. Our evaluation findings suggest that granular controls and structured onboarding allow viewers to make informed trade-offs when adapting media content, leading to improved viewing experiences.

Immersive experiences – enabled by technologies such as VR, AR, 360° video and other highly immersive multimedia applications – have the potential to make interacting with various activities more inclusive for many people. This can be achieved by applying the principles of inclusive design. This panel will discuss the current challenges in designing inclusive immersive technologies, and how they should be addressed.

Consuming subtitled video content relies on a viewers ability to match up and understand a number of visual inputs simultaneously. This can create challenges in immersion due to the overall readability of subtitles and the speed at which they are presented. In this paper we introduce Graphic Novel Subtitles as an alternative media consumption method that is based on combining video keyframes with subtitle text to create a comic-type experience. We carry out a requirement elicitation survey with 34 participants in order to explore this concept in more detail and identify key features that we present as system requirements.We then introduce a system that can automatically generate a graphic novel from video and subtitle files, and discuss our future evaluation plans.

Households contain a variety of surfaces that are used in a number of activity contexts. As ambient technology becomes commonplace in our homes, it is only a matter of time before these surfaces become linked to computer systems for Household Surface Interaction (HSI). However, little is known about the user experience attached to HSI, and the potential acceptance of HSI within modern homes. To address this problem, we ran a mixed methods user study with 39 participants to examine HSI using nine household surfaces and five common gestures (tap, press, swipe, drag, and pinch). We found that under the right conditions, surfaces with some amount of texture can enhance HSI. Furthermore, perceived good and poor user experience varied among participants for surface type indicating individual preferences. We present findings and design considerations based on surface characteristics and the challenges that users perceive they may have with HSI within their homes.

When creating digital artefacts, it is important to ensure that the product being made is accessible to as much of the population as is possible. Many guidelines and supporting tools exist to assist reaching this goal. However, little is known about developers' understanding of accessible practice and the methods that are used to implement this. We present findings from an accessibility design workshop that was carried out with a mixture of 197 developers and digital technology students. We discuss perceptions of accessibility, techniques that are used when designing accessible products, and what areas of accessibility development participants believed were important. We show that there are gaps in the knowledge needed to develop accessible products despite the effort to promote accessible design. Our participants are themselves aware of where these gaps are and have suggested a number of areas where tools, techniques and guidance would improve their practice.

Approximately 10% of the television audience use subtitles (captioning) to support their viewing experience. Subtitles enable viewers to participate in an experience that is often taken for granted by the general audience. However, when reviewing subtitle literature, it is uncommon to find work that examines the user experience of subtitle users. This paper presents work on the development of a framework analysing the user experience of watching subtitled content. The framework is introduced, its usage discussed, and the overall framework is then reflected on.

Millions of people rely on subtitles when watching video content. The current change in media viewing behaviour involving computers has resulted in a large proportion of people turning to online sources as opposed to regular television for news information. This work analyses the user experience of viewing subtitled news videos presented as part of a web page. A lab-based user experiment was carried out with frequent subtitle users, focusing on determining whether changes in video dimension and subtitle location could affect the user experience attached to viewing subtitled content. A significant improvement in user experience was seen when changing the subtitle location from the standard position of within a video at the bottom to below the video clip. Additionally, participants responded positively when given the ability to change the position of subtitles in real time, allowing for a more personalised viewing experience. This recommendation for an alternative subtitle positioning that can be controlled by the user is unlike current subtitling practice. It provides evidence that further user-based research examining subtitle usage outside of the traditional television interface is required.

Computing is now one of the fastest growing fields of employment, with a large bias placed on developing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in schools. However, due to the fast pace of technology development, it is increasingly difficult for schools to keep up with the latest computing methodologies. A possible solution is the use of university outreach programmes, whereby local universities can provide training workshops on areas that can be challenging for schools to implement. This can be problematic, as there is a perceived lack of interest in the methods used to interact with secondary school pupils on a university level.

Comparative studies including older and younger adults are becoming more common in HCI, generally used to compare how these two different age groups will approach a task. However, it is unclear whether user "age" is the underlying factor that differentiates between these two groups. To address this problem, an examination into the relationship between users' age, previous technology experience, and cognitive characteristics is conducted. Measures of perceived disorientation and reported ease of use are used to understand links that exist between these user characteristics and their effect on browsing experience. This is achieved through a lab-based information retrieval task, where participants visited a selection of websites in order to find answers to a series of questions and then self reported their feelings of perceived disorientation and website ease of use through a Likert-scored questionnaire.