Barriers to Employment: The Deaf Multimedia Authoring Tax

Abstract

This paper describes the challenges that deaf and hard of hearing people face with creating accessible multimedia content, such as portfolios, instructional videos and video presentations. Unlike content consumption, the process of content creation itself remains highly inaccessible, creating barriers to employment in all stages of recruiting, hiring, and carrying out assigned job duties. Overcoming these barriers incurs a "deaf content creation tax" that translates into requiring significant additional time and resources to produce content equivalent to what a non-disabled person would produce. We highlight this process and associated challenges through real-world examples experienced by the authors, and provide guidance and recommendations for addressing them.

5 pages

References in corpus (3)

• An Exploration of Captioning Practices and Challenges of Individual Content Creators on YouTube for People with Hearing Impairments
• Assessment of Sign Language-Based versus Touch-Based Input for Deaf Users Interacting with Intelligent Personal Assistants
• How Users Experience Closed Captions on Live Television: Quality Metrics Remain a Challenge