Airplane travel has become more easily available and affordable for the general public. This shift has, together with rapid digitalization, led to the widespread adoption of in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems which are screens attached to the back of airplane seats that allow passengers to watch movies, listen to music, and play games. They are now commonly found onboard flights to keep passengers entertained during their travels. Ensuring effective communication between pilots, cabin crew, and passengers is essential during flights and is typically achieved through public announcements (PA). Despite their importance, there is a lack of international regulations ensuring all passengers, particularly those with disabilities, can access this information. This study aims to investigate how the accessibility of PAs given through an IFE system can be improved, emphasizing its impact on passenger safety and comfort. This is achieved by identifying possible accessibility problems, implementing solutions to create a more accessible interface, and evaluating the outcome of the alterations made. The evaluations consist of completing barrier walkthroughs and accessibility heuristic evaluations along with user tests. Accessibility scores are measured for all three types of PA: video, audio, and text. A prototype was created, in which accessibility issues are solved and evaluated with the same measurements to be compared with previous results. Additional testing with persons with disabilities was performed to evaluate their opinions of the alterations made. Results show that the created prototype improves the accessibility scores for all types of PA. The data indicate that the largest contributors to the increase in accessibility are the added functionality of transcribing audio, ensuring that video has captions and that the text messages only disappear once the passenger actively dismisses it. In conclusion, the study shows that the accessibility of PA can be evaluated, and problems can be identified and improved following IFE-specific guidelines. It is possible to achieve a satisfactory level of accessibility for persons with disabilities to feel that they can receive all given information and not feel confused or stressed while receiving it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-225485 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Nordkvist, Viktoria |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | UMNAD ; 1456 |
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