The reception of subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Spanish TV news programs

Abstract

The current paper presents a study on the subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) in Spanish TV news programs (live and semi-live subtitling). The aim of this reception study is to analyze users’ comprehension and assessment of live and semi-live SDH. A contemporary corpus comprising items from real news broadcasts was used for the research, and a sample of 52 deaf and hard-of-hearing participants was recruited for the experiment, which was carried out through a variety of virtual and live sessions. The results show that users consider the quality of SDH acceptable and audiovisual comprehension insufficient.