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Understanding the community of blind or visually impaired vloggers on YouTube

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Abstract

We report on a study of understanding how blind or visually impaired (BVI) video bloggers (vloggers) use YouTube. To identify BVI vloggers on YouTube, we used combinations of keywords to find the videos that they uploaded. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 BVI vloggers to understand their experiences on YouTube. We identified salient themes regarding how they interact with videos and other users on YouTube through an open coding approach. Our analysis of the identified themes reveals that BVI vloggers use YouTube as an educational tool. While BVI vloggers share their stories with viewers to educate the public about blindness or visual impairments as vloggers, they learn how other BVI vloggers use accessibility tools in their daily life as viewers. Based on the results of this study, we present design opportunities to better support BVI vloggers on video-based social media platforms. To our knowledge, this is the first interview study for exploring the community of BVI vloggers on YouTube.

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Fig. 1
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Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. https://www.twitch.tv

  2. https://www.apple.com/imovie/

  3. https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/

  4. https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html

  5. https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/

  6. http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS/

  7. https://www.zoomtext.com

  8. https://www.nvaccess.org

  9. https://ableplayer.github.io/ableplayer/

  10. http://www.vorail.com

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our interview participants for sharing their experience, and Seonu Cho for helping with transcribing interview recordings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Michigan, 500 S State St., Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Woosuk Seo

  2. University of Seoul, 163 Seoulsiripdae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Hyunggu Jung

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  1. Woosuk Seo
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  2. Hyunggu Jung
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Correspondence to Hyunggu Jung.

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Seo, W., Jung, H. Understanding the community of blind or visually impaired vloggers on YouTube. Univ Access Inf Soc 20, 31–44 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00706-6

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