Dr. Lauren Ward, who is our resident expert on accessibility in broadcast media has just been awarded a two year research fellowship within the XR Stories project (https://xrstories.co.uk/). Lauren has been working on access strategies in broadcast media for hearing impaired listeners as part of her previous work with the BBC. She is now going to consolidate her research with work at the AudioLab on accessibility strategies using audio for visually impaired as well as neuro-diverse end-users. In conjunction with her new position she has also been awarded funding from the Screen Industries Guild Network (SIGN) to conduct a study which will look at the access needs of the UK autistic population when it comes to consuming audio-visual media. The project is called A3I: Accessible audio for autistic individuals and is a collaboration between the Universities of York and Sheffield.
