Research on the conditions under which TV images and sounds can be presented to elderly people in more user-friendly manner

日本是世界上最发达的国家之一，也感受到了老龄化带来的压力。在该国1.3亿人口中，有2000万人年龄在65岁或以上，预计到2025年，这一数字将上升到四分之一。在这样一个老龄化社会中，老年电视观众的数量将急剧上升，因此为老年人和残疾人提供易于观看和理解的电视节目非常重要。老年观众经常抱怨的是，新闻节目播音员说得太快，节目的BGM和其他噪音，包括观众的声音，使人们更难听到声音。在此背景下，我们研究了电视图像和声音可以以更用户友好的方式呈现给老年人和残疾人的条件。在本研究中，我们首先进行了一项主观测试，以评估老年人和年轻观众的电视新闻声音的用户友好性。我们研究了老年人在新闻节目中能更清楚地听到播音员声音的音频条件，并比较了老年人和年轻人之间的结果。接下来，我们检查了如何以及手语图像可以理解听力受损的观众取决于他们对手语的熟悉程度，并提出了最佳的再现速度。在主观评价测试中，手语新闻图像被呈现给听力障碍的参与者在这个首选的再现速度。我们还构建了一个系统，允许访问者在互联网上自由地改变手语图像的呈现速度。我们在随后的听障观众问卷调查中澄清了该系统的有用性和存在的问题。

Japan, one of the world's a most advanced nations, is feeling the strain of aging. Of the country's population of 130 million people, 20 million are aged 65 or older, a figure that is projected to rise to one in four by 2025. In such an aging society, the number of elderly TV viewers will rise dramatically, so it is important to provide TV programs that are easy to see and understand for the elderly and those with disabilities. Among the complaints often raised by elderly viewers are that news program announcers speak too quickly and that the program's BGM and other noise including the audience's voice make it more difficult to hear the sounds. With this background, we examined the conditions under which TV images and sounds can be presented to the elderly and those with disabilities in a more user-friendly manner.In this study, we first conducted a subjective test to evaluate the user-friendliness of TV news sounds for the elderly and young viewers. We studied audio conditions under which the elderly could hear the announcer's voice more clearly in a news program and compared the results between the elderly and young people. Next, we checked how well sign language images could be understood by hearing-impaired viewers depending on their familiarity with sign language and proposed an optimal speed of reproduction. In subjective evaluation test, sign language news images were presented to the participants with hearing impairments at this preferred reproduction speed. We also constructed a system that allows viwers to freely change the speed of presentation of sign language images on the Internet. We clarified the system's usefulness and problems in a subsequent questionnaire survey of hearing-impaired viewers.