MPEG-H Audio for Improving Accessibility in Broadcasting and Streaming

Broadcasting and streaming services still suffer from various levels of accessibility barriers for a significant portion of the population, limiting the access to information and culture, and in the most severe cases limiting the empowerment of people. This paper provides a brief overview of some of the most common accessibility barriers encountered. It then gives a short introduction to object-based audio (OBA) production and transport, focusing on the aspects relevant for lowering accessibility barriers. MPEG-H Audio is used as a concrete example of an OBA system already deployed. Two example cases (dialog enhancement and audio description) are used to demonstrate in detail the simplicity of producing MPEG-H Audio content providing improved accessibility. Several other possibilities are outlined briefly. We show that using OBA for broadcasting and streaming content allows offering several accessibility features in a flexible manner, requiring only small changes to the existing production workflow, assuming the receiver supports the functionality.