Study on Television News Accessibility for Visually Impaired People: The Case of ETV57 News/ Addis Ababa
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Date
2020-06
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AAU
Abstract
Different studies recognized that visually impaired people watch television by spending more
time than people who have no sight problem. Conversely, there is a challenge of accessibility of
television message for visually impaired people to understand full information disseminated by
television. World Health Organization report shows that 1.3 billion people of the world affected
by any form of vision impairment and most of them challenged to access audiovisual contents in
their home easily. The number of people those have sight problem in Ethiopia is around four
million. This number is equal to the last six least populated African countries total population or
equivalent to the last fifteen least populated European countries total population. Based on the
above facts, researcher tried to investigate the content accessibility of Ethiopian Broadcasting
Corporation ETV57 news for visually impaired people those who have no hearing problem. The
objective of this research has to evaluate television message accessibility for visually impaired
people and challenges they faced to access ETV57 news message. Mixed methods of research
analysis approach were employing for the study. To investigate the accessibility of ETV57 news
for visually impaired people, researcher uses news evaluation by using checklist, two focus
group discussion and in-depth interview with journalists and visually impaired people. Five
hundred eighty news items have taken as a sample in two months to evaluate ETV57 news
message accessibility for visually impaired people. At the end, the major finding of this research
shows that 58% of ETV57 news is not accessible for visually impaired people. All participants of
the focus group discussion and in-depth interview with visually impaired peoples confirmed that
they have challenged by television news to access its message properly. Specially, most of
business news, meteorology, and scrolled news /computer graphics news are that news
categorized under inaccessible news. Giving awareness about challenges of visually impaired
people to access television news for journalists and supporting television news accessibility by
legal policy has what recommended by researcher.
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Study on Television News Accessibility for Visually Impaired People