Immersive Captioning: Developing a framework for evaluating user needs

This article focuses on captioning for immersive environments and the research aims to identify how to display them for an optimal viewing experience. This work began four years ago with some partial findings. This second stage of research, built from the lessons learnt, focuses on the design requirements cornerstone: prototyping. A tool has been developed towards quick and realistic prototyping and testing. The framework integrates methods used in existing solutions. Given how easy it is to contrast and compare, the need to further the first framework was obvious. A second improved solution was developed, almost as a showcase on how ideas can quickly be implemented for user testing. After an overview on captions in immersive environments, the article describes its implementation, based on web technologies opening for any device with a web browser. This includes desktop computers, mobile devices and head mounted displays. The article finishes with a description of the new caption modes and methods, hoping to be a useful tool towards testing and standardisation.