Accessibility in screen media is typically framed as services for discrete user groups (e.g. visually impaired users), with HCI work largely focusing on post-production and playback interventions rather than the wider production ecology. We report findings from interviews and workshops with media practitioners spanning pre-production, production, and post-production, surfacing a gap between practitioners’ orientation toward meeting audiences where they are and the organisational conditions that systematically prevent this. Our thematic analysis shows how access is (a) authored into storytelling and planning when time and creative ownership allow, (b) undermined by fragmented responsibility and remit boundaries across handovers, and (c) constrained by workflow realities and product economics that shape what can be delivered, maintained, and scaled. We also surface frictions between creative intent and end-user comprehension, and between device-level personalisation and source-level authorship. We contribute a design agenda for integrated media accessibility, including principles for making space and time for access, supporting inclusive viewing, and enabling accountable content creation and automation.

Audio media – radio, podcasts, audiobooks – structures everyday life: we keep up, wind down, and share moments through long-form listening. Yet for people living with aphasia – a communication disability that affects audio comprehension – unsupported audio often means losing the thread and marring the experience. While accessibility advances have focused on print, web, and audiovisual content, audio-only remains unconsidered; oftentimes optimised for marketisation rather than sustained understanding.We report a three-week in-situ deployment of Re-Connect app, an audio media player which meets the people at the moment of comprehension difficulty. With ten adults living with aphasia, we show how people assemble personal repertoires of small, co-present communication cues that repair in the moment and support recall. Grounded in lived experience, we argue for personal, source-proximate scaffolds that help make long-form audio more understandable and enjoyable.

Digital audiovisual media (e.g., TV, streamed video) is an essential aspect of our modern lives, yet it lacks accessibility -- people living with disabilities can experience significant barriers. While accessibility interventions can improve the access to audiovisual media, people living with complex communication needs have been under-represented in research and are potentially left behind. Future visions of accessible digital audiovisual media posit highly personalised content that meets complex accessibility needs. We explore the impact of such a future by conducting bespoke co-design sessions with people with aphasia -- a language impairment common post-stroke -- creating four highly personal accessibility interventions that leverage audiovisual media personalisation. We then trialled these prototypes with 11 users with aphasia; examining the effects on shared social experiences, creative intent, interaction complexity, and feasibility for content producers. We conclude by critically reflecting on future implementations, raising open questions and suggesting future research directions.

Audio-media, such as radio and podcasts, are a vital means to engage with global events, access education, or offer entertainment. However, for people with complex communication needs, such as aphasia, there can be accessibility challenges. While accessibility research has largely focused on audiovisual media, little work has considered audio-media, particularly for users with complex communication needs. To address this gap, we undertook six co-design workshops with 10 people with aphasia to re-imagine access to audio-media. We uncover how our co-designers perceive audio-media as more than a tool, but a part of daily intimacies; shaping social relationships and contributing to therapeutic recovery. Through a Research-through-Design process culminating in one low-fidelity and three high-fidelity technology probes that embody novel accessibility interventions, our findings further challenge conventional approaches to audio-media accessibility and signal new directions for future design.

Audiovisual media is integral to modern living, yet is not always accessible to all. Modern accessibility interventions, such as subtitles, support many, however, communities with complex communication needs are largely unconsidered. In this work, we envision future accessibility interventions from the ground up with one such community – people with aphasia. Over two workshops and a probe activity, we problematise the space of audiovisual consumption by people with aphasia, and co-envision directions for development in accessible audiovisual media. From low-fi diegetic prototypes to mid-fidelity solutions, we explore new visions of accessibility interventions for complex communication needs – notably enabling high levels of content manipulation and personalisation. Our findings raise open questions and set directions for the research community in developing accessibility interventions for audiovisual media to support users with diverse needs in accessing audiovisual content.

The presence of audiovisual media is a mainstay in the lives of many, increasingly so with technological progress. Accessing video and audio content, however, can be challenging for people with diverse needs. Existing research has explored a wide range of accessibility challenges and worked with disabled communities to design technologies that help bridge the access gap. Despite this work, our understanding of the challenges faced by communities with complex communication needs (CCNs) remains poor. To address this shortcoming, we present the first study that investigates the viewing experience of people with the communication impairment aphasia through an online survey (N=41) and two focus group sessions (N=10), with the aim of understanding their specific access challenges. We find that aphasia significantly impact viewing experience and present a taxonomy of access barriers and facilitators, with suggestions for future research.

Audiovisual media is an integral part of many people’s everyday lives. People with accessibility needs, especially people with complex accessibility needs, however, may face challenges accessing this content. This doctoral work addresses this problem by investigating how complex accessibility needs can be met by content personalisation by leveraging data-driven methods. To this end, I will collaborate with people with aphasia, a complex language impairment, as an exemplar community of people with complex accessibility needs. To better understand the needs of people with aphasia, I will use collaborative design techniques to meet the needs of end users. This will involve them in the design, development and evaluation of systems that demonstrate the benefits of content personalisation as an accessibility intervention. This paper outlines the background and motivation to this PhD, the work that has already been completed, and current planned future work.

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.