User-centric approaches in access services evaluation : profiling the end user

This article presents best practices for the design of a user-centric approach in accessibility research projects, taking two European projects as an example: ImAc (Immersive Accessibility) and EasyTV (Easing the access of Europeans with disabilities to converging media and content). Both H2020 projects aim to investigate access services such as audio description, audio subtitling, subtitling/captioning or sign language interpreting in media content. The paper explains the many and varied documentation required to comply with existing ethical issues in Europe. Designing alternative means of obtaining information will be explained, since interaction with participants had to cater for the needs of diverse users. The second part of the article presents an overview of user profiling in previous accessibility projects in the field of media accessibility, and shows good practices based on the two ongoing projects. Finally, the article presents an example of how users have been defined and how they have been involved in the initial stages of both ImAc and EasyTV, by summarizing the methodology developed for a series of focus groups with end users. The article concludes with some recommendations when involving users in accessibility research.